


King by the Roadside

by nimmieamee



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Abuse, Alcohol, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Blow Jobs, Cunnilingus, Drug Use, F/M, Frottage, M/M, Minor Character Deaths, Rimming, Slow Build, Violence, non-con elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-30
Updated: 2016-04-20
Packaged: 2018-05-17 05:37:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 164,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5856199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nimmieamee/pseuds/nimmieamee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Richard Campbell Gansey III has never had any run-ins with bees. He's never stepped on a hive. He's never suffered any stings. He knows nothing about ley lines or Welsh kings.</p><p>Then he loses everything, and has to learn.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

"Barrington!" said the Dean, cutting across the main green. "Barrington! I have your names for the thank-you-a-thon."

It was hard to say whether Barrington Whelk heard him. It was a fine day, late April, the weather perfect. The green was brimming with young men, spilling them out onto the lacrosse field and the track field and the lesser quad and the mossy circle in front of the freshman dormitories. Each and every boy was arrogant, affluent, and carefully groomed. The spring light reflected off of massive watches, played on innumerable pastel button-downs. No one moved to let the Dean through. In the center of the green, Dick Gansey III was holding court, as usual, inseparable from his crew team cohort. His tousled, all-American good looks momentarily distracted even the Dean. Then the Dean remembered what he was doing and turned to look for Whelk again. In his haste to find Whelk, he stomped on four or five navy blue sweaters discarded in the grass and only belatedly remembered to chastise their owners. No one listened to him. Mid-spring at Aglionby was a celebratory time. Soon, too soon, everyone would have to begin studying for exams.

Whelk knew he was still young enough to be mistaken for a student, albeit for a moment and only when seen from a distance. He had heard the Dean. He chose not to answer the Dean. Instead he knocked past a gang of boys lounging near the entrance to Borden House, all flashy sunglasses and expensive distressed jeans. He ignored their rude comments as he hurried to the safety of the Latin classroom.

Alone there. Left to await to the fucking thank-you-a-thon. 

The best time of year for Aglionby was the worst for Whelk. St. Mark's Day. This year, to make it even more awful, every employee would receive a stack of names and phone numbers and, in hour long shifts, pledge their thanks over and over again for donations to the school.

"Thank you for your contribution."

"Thank you for your contribution."

"Thank you for your contribution."

Whelk hated it. He knew what would be happening on the other end. He knew the easy boredom, the carefree irritation. The way they would immediately forget who they were talking to, even if he said his name over and over. The blithe excuses they would concoct for not wanting to pledge more right away. 

_Well, you know. We're overextended this year._

This while sitting in their BMWs, enjoying their corner offices, working jobs that were not real jobs at all. Having lunch near Sothebys; treating senators to dinner. Learning how to work their new state-of-the-art technology.

_I'm so sorry. It's just that I have no idea how to hit speakerphone on this -- it's the latest model -- and I'm at the spa._

The thank-you-a-thon was an endless direct dial to everything he'd lost. He hated it fiercely, and yet every year he had to do it. It was a condition of working life, this non-optional optional activity. But in prior years Whelk had only had to do it in the fall. It was only this year that the Dean had decided to make it biannual. Now it occurred once in the fall and once on St. Mark's Day. Tomorrow.

He always requested St. Mark's Day off, but this year the Dean had suggested, making it clear that this was not a suggestion, that Whelk stay for the thank-you-a-thon.

He remembered how his parents had carelessly pledged ten grand a year. He remembered picking it up the phone at home over Thanksgiving break and hearing the stammered gratitude direct from the mouth of some office assistant. It was funny, what being alone with yourself could make you remember. One year -- maybe sophomore year -- he'd had Czerny over, and they'd laughed about the caller's stutter.

"Th-thank y-you?" Whelk had repeated, into the phone. "Say that again?"

Czerny had laughed into his arm. He'd been a boring, needy houseguest. He'd wanted to do everything with Whelk, be everywhere Whelk was. In fact what Whelk had wanted that Thanksgiving break was to leave Czerny at home and meet with Czerny's girlfriend instead. But Czerny was easily gotten-rid of. He was the kind of troublemaker who could not generate trouble himself, but would gladly take it up if pointed in the right direction. Whelk remembered now what the dare had been: dropping turkeys off of the overpass. Czerny had been arrested and his parents had posted bail right away, twice what they'd supposedly donated to Aglionby. Whelk had laughed about it for days, especially when he could see Czerny's ears going red over it.

Now, in the gloom of the Latin classroom, he could see Czerny as though it were yesterday, and the red was pooling around the place where his white face had caved in. Whelk could still feel the force of the blow reverberating through his hands.

Someone slipped in through the classroom door.

It would be Adam Parrish, as alone as Whelk was. Parrish was Whelk's favorite student, if by 'favorite' one meant 'bearable.' Intelligent. But he was trailer trash, so it didn't matter. Aglionby had excellent financial aid, but usually it wasn't handed out to such a needy case.

Generally Parrish appeared long before anyone else did -- which was to say, on time -- and turned in his homework, and did well enough. So Whelk never gave him any problems. Parrish would settle into the corner by the squeaky heater and carefully look over his homework before turning it in, which was a courtesy none of the others would bother to extend, never mind how illegible their writing was, so Whelk would let him get to it. He would not even look up.

He did not look up now.

The smell assaulted him before his guest even cleared her throat. Herbal, woodsy. Trees and moss and something a little bit dead under the leaves. 

"Are you Barrington Whelk?" she said.

She had a pleasant radio voice, and she was pleasantly plump in a way that Whelk found very common. She dropped a large bowl of -- something -- on his desk, and Whelk jumped.

"It's so nice to meet you, Mr. Whelk," she said, though he hadn't confirmed his identity. She did sound like she really thought it was nice. Unfortunately, the sloshing something on his desk was not so nice. It was not just that it was dripping all over Ronan Lynch's last assignment, which Ronan Lynch wouldn't miss anyway. It was that the inside of the bowl wasn't a bowl at all, but a thing teeming with life.

Or not.

 _Fuck_ , Whelk thought. _Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck_. He couldn't stop his hands from shaking. In the bowl, Czerny was splayed on the forest floor. Czerny's cheek was smashed in. From such a high distance, it looked like nothing more than a smudge, but Whelk remembered the shift of the bones and the way the pooling red had soon reached the eyeball.

"A little ghost told me," the woman said, "Confidentially, you understand. And mostly unwillingly. That you are the man to talk to about the ley line. And about St. Mark's Eve."

"Saint--" Whelk began. He couldn't seem to form sentences. "...Eve?"

"Neeve," the woman corrected. Or maybe didn't. What on earth was a Neeve?

"I'm Neeve," she said breezily. She pulled one of the desks over and sat on it, spreading out her witchy skirts. "And I believe you and I can help each other, Barrington. I believe I can give you everything you dream of this year."

-

When Adam Parrish did come in, Whelk was behaving uncharacteristically. For Whelk. Adam was used to seeing him sitting at the desk, his head in his hands as though he thought his own over-large features might pop out and roll away. But today he was at the board; holding a heavy, leather-bound book; looking at it and scribbling furiously.

His scribbles were not all in Latin. They often had a lot of Ys, and not so many other vowels. 

"Sir?" Adam said.

He would have left Whelk to it, except that the Dean had asked him to deliver a packet of names and phone numbers for the thank-you-a-thon tomorrow night. Adam, as a scholarship student, had his own packet. He would be taking off work to do his shift. He worried the sleeve of his sweater over it without even realizing he was doing this. He didn't know if he could afford to take off from work. 

When Whelk did not respond, Adam repeated himself.

"Sir," he said. "The Dean gave me--"

Whelk took the packet without looking at it, rolled it up, and shoved in in the pocket of his blazer.

Adam retreated to his corner. Whelk continued to scribble furiously. Adam tried to tune out the sound of the chalk as he looked over last night's assignment. He'd completed it in the early hours of the morning, after his shift at the trailer factory, and he could not be sure it was legible. His head buzzed with exhaustion but he was grateful for this time, these ten or so minutes snatched before the start of class. People rarely ever came into the Latin classroom before they had to. Whelk was not the kind of person people wanted to spend an extra ten minutes with. 

Though sometimes Ronan Lynch slouched in early. He did this today. Lynch was feral, handsome, unbearable, and very good at Latin. It seemed to be the only class he cared about. The rest of the time he and his gang -- Kavinsky, Skov, Swan -- avoided class entirely. 

Lynch was looking at him now, Adam thought, but then this was a Lynch thing. He couldn't walk into a room without confronting everything in it. Adam ignored him. Lynch was a wild dog. Eye contact not advised. 

A few more people trickled in after the bell rang, but class did not begin. Would not begin. Classes with Dick Gansey in them did not begin before Dick Gansey arrived.

Adam heard him before he walked in. It was impossible _not_ to hear Dick Gansey. Something about his voice was deceptively lovely, smooth and moneyed, polished by years of good breeding.

"I keep meaning to drop it," he was saying to someone -- Tad Carruthers, maybe; or Maxwell Merritt; or Skip Whittaker. Someone on the crew team. Gansey was never without his courtiers. 

"What's the use of a language you can't even use to order off a menu?" he added.

Then he was at the door.

Adam did not look up. Adam would not look up. He wouldn't. He _wouldn't_. 

He already knew what Gansey looked like, anyway. Broad-shouldered, strong-jawed, handsome. Perpetually tanned in a way that suggested lavish summer homes and regattas and trips to Croatian beaches. He exuded money in a way that made it clear he had always had it, and always would. His ancestors had had it, and so had theirs, because the Gansey family tree was, possibly, cut in crystal and arranged in a Tiffany box somewhere. Everything he did collected power to him -- speaking, waving, deigning to acknowledge someone. 

He did not ever acknowledge Adam because there was no reason to. Gansey was the glossy face of his mother's senatorial campaign, the face on the Aglionby newsletter and the brochures. Adam had been born in a trailer.

"What's that, Whelk?" Gansey said, sliding easily into his seat. He gestured at the board. Adam thought that when he said _Whelk_ it was like saying _be glad I remembered your name_.

Whelk turned on one heel, smoothly, too smoothly for someone as clumsy as Whelk. He regarded Gansey for a moment and, remarkably, he smiled.

Adam had never seen Whelk smile before.

"Don't mind that, Mr. Gansey," Whelk said.

-

Gansey's father had recommended that he drop Latin. People were always recommending things to Gansey. His mother recommended Yale when she knew he would prefer Princeton. His sister recommended dates that left Gansey profoundly bored, Kelseys and Kenzies and Sloanes galore. When he'd first come to Henrietta, the realtor had recommended a hideous old box, some old manufacturing plant halfway out of town.

People liked to give Gansey their advice. They liked to give Gansey just about anything.

Today Milo gave them English class off. In part, it was because Gansey had successfully plead the case for the whole crew team -- there would be an early practice tomorrow, they all had bodyweight exercises to do, Tad in particular was due a turn on the ergometer. It was difficult to turn Gansey down when he asked for something. Gansey knew this. He didn't think it was arrogant to know it. It was a fact.

"Ugh, the erg," Tad said, when the team had filed out of class, leaving behind the unathletic and/or the perpetually unmotivated. "Are you serious, Dick?"

Gansey was captain and could have enforced it, but he didn't care to. He didn't particularly want to report to the athletic center. It was a spring day and glorious, and he wanted to be anywhere but Aglionby and the dusty, dull town of Henrietta. His parents and his sister Helen were skiing in the Eastern Alps. He felt cheated to not be with them. It was muggy and decidedly not Alpine here in Virginia, but there was a regatta this weekend that he couldn't miss.

He clapped Tad on the arm. 

"Let's just take the day off," he said amiably.

There was a chorus of cheers, whoop whoop Gansey boys, that's it Treys, and assorted other noises. The team was a lively beast, and Gansey tuned it all out as they fired suggestions for the afternoon's activities at him, discussed rapid-fire the likelihood of meeting girls from St. Mildred's if they went over into nearby Harrisville, tossed out vague plans for how best to procure drinks and make a night of it.

He didn't really want another night of it. There'd been a lot of them lately, and they were starting to get dull. He didn't really know what he wanted. To change, perhaps. It was so hot that he'd sweated through his sweater and polo, and he felt too-sticky, practically inhuman. He steered himself towards his Mercedes, ignoring the conversation around him. The conversation followed on a leash. Tad said something particularly loud and Gansey swatted him away patiently, like a bee.

Bees were the one things he didn't swat, though. He had an allergy. Nothing had ever come of it, no close calls with hives, no stings. His parents were very good about making his safety a priority, and so was the school. Helen joked that their mother made Aglionby employ tiny bee-catchers, but that was not it. They'd just instituted rules about floral colognes and eating outdoors, that kind of thing. Bees would not come if there was nothing to attract them.

The Mercedes sat in Gansey's parking space, silver and sleek. It was a gift from his mother. It was both too flashy for his tastes and not flashy enough, and he wondered if he should switch it for the Aston Martin. He didn't like to take any of his cars into town, but he had to take something. 

There was always the new one. He could take that one.

The team piled in, those who weren't fast enough forced into Tad's BMW, Skip's Suburban. Tad and Skip would follow him, he knew, which was a relief at this point. He did not have to verbalize; they just knew to do it. He pulled out of the parking space and then out of the lot and down the main drive.

At the school entrance, on the sign, a single student sat and watched the car. Slender, fair-haired, with dirt on his face. Gansey waved out of sheer politeness. The student did not wave back.

"Who are you waving at, Trey?" said Max. Gansey didn't bother to answer; he was trying to determine if he really _did_ want to take the new car. It could be good for a laugh. He just didn't think he wanted people laughing at it, for some reason.

Max subsided, and joined the discussion the rest were having, about the likelihood of defeating Pennington this weekend. The line of cars tore down the main highway towards the subdivision. Gansey knew the way like the back of his hand, and it wasn't too far, which was precisely why he'd chosen to buy property there. It was ugly and nouveau riche, but it served his purposes, and at the very least it wasn't a ruined manufacturing plant.

So he could drive there and not pay much attention to the driving at all. He could think of the new car.

It was undeniably a very loud shade of orange. It didn't run quite right. Its innards were a complete and total mystery to Gansey and he had yet to find a decent mechanic for it. He didn't really want to give up and go crying to his father's people. That would be embarrassing. 

Car collecting was a Gansey man business. It was just that Gansey had not, until now, engaged in it, and now that he had he'd let his heart make a disastrous purchase. He had passed up an auction for a Ferrarri 250 GTO Berlinetta to bid on the Camaro instead. The Camaro. Like something out of an exciting seventies television program. Nothing like his father's antique luxury European models. 

He would not be taking it into town. It didn't fit him, not really. He knew it didn't. It screamed leather jackets and roadside Americana. Ganseys were piped blazers and the first families of Virginia. He really couldn't imagine why he'd bought it. Except that he'd desperately, desperately wanted it, and when he wanted things he bought them. There was no reason for this to give him a crisis, and he told himself so.

He did wish he could take it into town, though. He wished he could take it anywhere. But he was acutely aware that it would seem like a joke to people if he did, and maybe the joke would be on Gansey himself, for wanting to be the kind of person who fit a car like that. He knew he wasn't that kind of person and really there was no reason to want to be. Being himself was certainly enough.

The team clearly thought so. They erupted into his house in storm of good nature, filling it to the brim. Gansey let them enjoy themselves in the first and second floors. He took the elevator to the third, where he could draw a bath and change.

"Gansey boy!" Skip called through the door. "What do you say about heading to Harrisville?" 

He made an agreeable noise. He was good at those. Not quite a yes, but maybe a yes. Gansey was used to making decisions, but in his own time. Not when other people wanted him to.

At the moment, he suspected that going into town would have to be enough. They couldn't stay out late. Practice was at 6 AM tomorrow, and Tad did need a turn on the erg. And Gansey was captain. He had a responsibility to make sure they were all well-rested. But he wanted more than town. He wanted -- perhaps not Alpine skiing. Certainly not with his mother obsessing over her campaign and his father obsessing over antique German engineering and Helen fighting snappishly with his mother and his mother fighting coldly and agreeably with her staff. But it would have been nice to have something like Alpine skiing, only perhaps entirely different.

Something he _cared_ about.

This thought came to him when he was already out of the bath, examining his chin in the mirror. It was still a hairless chin. And that was a ludicrous thought.

"You care about crew," he informed himself.

The polished, attractive young man in the mirror didn't tell him otherwise. So it was true. He went to pick out clean clothes; nothing fancy, a citrus button-down and slacks. Then he went back downstairs to round up the team and inform them that they'd all be heading to Nino's. He waved away the ensuing chorus of groans. They would do as he asked.

"Thanks, Tad," Skip said wryly. "He's only doing it because you need work."

Tad flushed.

"We're a team," Gansey told Skip firmly. "You've needed work before as well, and we stayed in for you. As if any of us wouldn't do it for the others."

"Oh, Gansey boy," Skip said affectionately, shaking his head.

-

In the grand scheme of things, a congress of raven boys arriving at Nino's two full hours before they usually got out of class was not the worst thing that could have happened. For example, Cialina could have failed to arrive, forcing Blue to seat them all and bring them all drinks. Donny could have announced that everyone would have their hours cut. The ovens could have exploded.

None of this occurred. Blue knew she should be grateful for it, but she was not grateful. She had timed her shift today in order to avoid any run-ins with raven boys. She had twenty more minutes with only the regular kind of overbearing patron, and that was all she could take today. Tonight was St. Mark's Eve. Tonight was the night she was due to observe St. Mark's Eve with Orla.

It was a terrible betrayal. Every year, Blue's mother, Maura, sat on the wall of the old churchyard and recited the names of the dead. Blue took them down for her, a Girl Friday for the supernatural. It was not Blue's favorite ritual, because it reminded Blue that she could not see the dead herself -- only make it possible for Maura to see and speak to them. Maura was psychic. Blue was not. Despite this crucial difference, St. Mark's Eve was Blue and Maura's ritual. Not Orla's.

Blue didn't understand why Maura had opted out this year. It might have had something to do with Maura's sister Neeve's visit, but as Blue understood it Neeve would be busy on her own tonight. And it wasn't like Neeve and Maura were especially close. They were half-sisters, but they treated each other more like commuters on the same bus line. The line they frequently traveled, however, was not the local coach to Harrisville. Neeve and Maura both traversed the corpse road, the path of spiritual energy that cut under and through Henrietta.

Neeve was better at it than Maura was. Even Maura admitted this. Maybe this was why she was begging off -- she didn't want to be shown up. But Blue didn't think that was it. Maura was cheerful about the limits of her power, not insecure. And Neeve wasn't overbearing, like Orla. Just weird. Blue was used to scrying magic, and card magic, and magic with limits. Neeve didn't seem to think limits were necessary. Blue had caught Calla, Persephone, and Jimi discussing it this morning. Something to do with two mirrors in Neeve's room, which if you understood the corpse road was apparently very worrisome and arrogant of Neeve, and boded ill. But Blue didn't understand the corpse road, because people usually told her it was not her wheelhouse.

Apparently it was Orla's. 

So Blue was already in a foul mood by the time Cialina brought the orders to the kitchen. Raven boys had bottomless pockets and even more bottomless stomachs. These raven boys seemed to want a large pie each, and looking at them Blue could see why. All were broad-shouldered, muscular, athletic. It was easy to pick out the leader, because he was talking into his cell phone but the others kept checking in with him anyway. He caught Blue looking and raised a hand, flagging her. 

Blue looked for Cialina. Cialina looked at her notepad and wrote something on it. It was a long something. Blue suspected it said, "Please don't make me go back to that table."

"Do you want me to take this?" she asked, when the leader had flagged her three or four more times. He didn't seem bothered that she wasn't coming. He didn't seem to believe that there was any way she wouldn't come, in the end. Raven boys usually got what they wanted.

"Could you?" Cialina said breathlessly. "I'm swamped."

Blue went to see what they wanted. 

The raven boy who had flagged her was no taller than the average boy, and besides this he was sitting down, but something about him felt tall. Unlike his friends, who for all their polo shirts and expensive watches still seemed sweaty and teenage and typical, he was clean and well-pressed from head to toe. There was something glossy about him, straight teeth and a straight nose and an excellent jaw. Made-for-TV. Or for the White House.

"There you are," he said to her, without hanging up his phone. It was not an _do you know how long I was waiting?_ there-you-are. It was a _naturally I called and you came_ there-you-are. This was somehow worse. Blue grit her teeth and put on a smile.

"Can I help you?" she said. 

"You have to," said the raven boy, somehow making this seem like a gracious response. Blue knew it was not gracious. Her mind told her it wasn't. But there was nothing in his tone that made it un-gracious. It seemed perfectly natural for him to respond in this way, and then to leave her hanging while he addressed his phone instead.

"Yes, it's not the best-tempered vehicle," he was saying. "Of course I could have bought the Berlinetta."

"Can. I. Help. You?" Blue said.

He said, "One minute," and put the phone down easily. This was a minor inconvenience for him. 

"My friends were wondering if you could settle something for them," he told Blue blithely. Then he put the phone back to his ear and said, "Well, I can't imagine Ischgl will have much antique glassware, no."

Dismissed, Blue faced the table. Not a single raven boy bothered to look up at her -- they were too busy cramming straw wrappers into already-empty glasses, which would be a pain to fish out later. 

"Skip, ask her," said the one in a sky blue polo. 

Skip's polo was a sprightly shade of tangerine. He made a face.

"You ask her," he told the sky blue polo.

The one in a shirt with small whales on it answered instead.

"Like, what is with the look?" he said, waving a hand at Blue. His hand was festooned with a watch that cost more than she'd ever see. Blue felt her eyebrows crawling up her forehead.

"Excuse me?" she said.

"You know," said Whale Shirt. "The look. The rips. The safety pins. The skin. The witch skirt."

"Stevie Nicks skirt," corrected the head raven boy, before explaining to his cell phone that he wasn't sure he should risk a test drive. Then, to Blue, as though nothing odd were happening, "It _is_ Stevie Nicks, right? You like that kind of thing?"

He didn't wait for an answer before turning back to his phone. 

"It's, like, what are you?" said Blue Polo. "And if I wanted to get a girl at St. Mildred's to shred her shirt like that, how would I do it?"

"Uncalled for," the leader said in rebuke. Then it was back to his phone. 

Somehow it was this, more than anything else, that made Blue furious. She'd always expected that spending too much time with a booth full of raven boys would mean vaguely awkward, sexist conversation. That was not the worst part. The sheer casual _dismissal_ was the worst part. She had the urge to rip his cell phone out of his hands and dunk it in his soda, but he could probably afford a new one, and she couldn't afford a new job.

"This whole conversation is uncalled for," she snapped. "If you don't have an order, I'm leaving."

"If we don't have an _order_?" said Blue Polo. The rest of them hooted. 

Blue, face burning, turned on her heel and walked slowly back to the kitchen. Cialina mouthed 'sorry.' Blue ignored it. Ten more minutes. Ten more minutes. Then she could go. Then she would go, regardless of whether the raven boys were still here.

Ten minutes later, she was balling her apron into her pocket and heading out across the parking, mood blacker than ever, when someone tapped her on the shoulder.

It was the head raven boy. He had slung a blazer on, the kind with fancy white detailing around the collar and edges, probably to account for the chill of the afternoon. But he did not look chilled. He looked distinctly presidential. Blue realized with annoyance that he was not so tall, just as she'd suspected, but that tall fit him so well that probably no one ever noticed his perfectly average height. Since Blue was five feet herself, this didn't endear him to her. She just wanted to know how he'd done it. 

She didn't ask. She didn't want to know that badly. She turned around again without giving him the time of day, which she could bet no one had ever done before. But she was off the clock now. Too bad for him.

"Are you running away?" he said. He sounded incredulous.

"No," Blue snapped. "I'm off the clock."

He was suddenly walking beside her. 

"Good," he said. "You can come back in and sit with Tad."

Blue stopped in her tracks.

" _Tad?_ " she said.

"Blue shirt, tallish," said the raven boy. "His grandfather wants him to find a girl. You didn't have to be so rude. Tad just needs to work on his presentation."

The fact that his last three sentences did not connect in any kind of logical way did not seem to perturb him. In fact, he made them seem effortlessly logical just by saying them as though they were logical. There was something disturbingly political to it.

"I am not going to sit with Tad," Blue said, turning to her bike. "I am going home."

"I think he could make it worth your while," the raven boy said. His phone beeped at him and he examined it casually again, as though he had said nothing impolite. 

"Here's a thought," Blue said, feeling like she'd slap him if she didn't get away. "Maybe I'm not talking to Tad because I don't find him appealing. Maybe I think Tad and his friends talking about my clothes while I'm at work--"

She swung onto her bicycle.

"--does not make me want to sit with them!"

She would have left it at that, but it didn't seem enough, somehow. It wasn't really Tad that had upset her, but all of them, and especially this one. So she added, "And I don't appreciate you offering to make it _worth my while_ , either!"

He looked puzzled. 

"I did not say it like that," he protested. But he went back to his phone, unperturbed, as she biked away. 

So by the time she made it home to 300 Fox Way she was in her blackest mood yet. 

"Oh, great," Orla said, watching her stomp past the kitchen. "She's going to be great to hang out with tonight."

"You're hanging out with the dead, Orla," Neeve said primly, scattering a great clump of herbs on the table and upsetting Jimi's attempts to have an early dinner. She squinted at them, like she could see something. 

"The dead can be very useful," Neeve continued. "But not, generally, for a good time."

\- 

Gansey spent the whole afternoon furiously googling a good mechanic, the right mechanic, like a prince searching for a girl who had lost her slipper. Only in this case it was not a girl that concerned him, but that car. And he did not need a delicate foot; he needed a place of good repute, local, that could convince him he hadn't completely lost his mind in purchasing the damn thing.

Helen had been very quick to tell him just that.

"Why did he buy that thing?" he heard his father saying, on the other end. 

"I know why," his mother had replied.

Helen had broken off mid-conversation to say, "Really. Why, then?" 

Gansey had tuned out the crew team and the easily-offended waitress and tried to listen for the answer. He'd also wanted to know why. He'd made a mental note to learn just what his mother had been meaning to say. Then the conversation was redirected to politics and expensive collectibles. It usually was with his mother.

So he'd turned to trying to justify his decision. But the only place he'd come across in all his frantic cell phone googling was a dubious operation called Boyd's. He took the Mercedes there after dropping the team off. Just to investigate. Boyd's looked shabby and poorly lit. He decided that he couldn't trust anything they told him there. It would be like securing a diagnosis from a doctor who worked out of clinic in the local strip mall. He took the Mercedes back to the subdivision. 

In the garage, the Camaro seemed to stare at him defiantly. 

Gansey wanted to drive it. It was stupid -- he wasn't even sure it was in good condition. He had all the permits and papers associated with it in the glove compartment, in case he decided to return it post-haste. But he didn't want to return it. He wanted to drive it. When he opened the driver-side door he felt sheepish, but as soon as he was behind the wheel he felt _right_.

Helen had stridently reminded him that he knew nothing about cars. In fact, she'd thrown in a great deal about how abysmal he was with planes and helicopters as well. The message had been plain: Richard Campbell Gansey III had no judgment when it came to these things.

Key in the ignition. 

Shift.

Twist.

Foot to pedal. 

He hated being told to second-guess his judgment. Only Helen and his mother ever did it, and he wished they wouldn't. The Camaro tore out of the subdivision with heavy violence. Once it hit the road, it seemed wonderful and hideous all at once, powerful and rough and real. It did not feel anything like him, it did not feel remotely easy or smooth or well-designed. But it felt right. Maybe he'd been right to buy it. Maybe this was right. He let the town tear by him, took the car down a backroad where he could be alone with it. He went faster with it than he'd ever gone with the Mercedes or the Aston Martin, simply because he wanted to. It didn't matter anyway. The local police knew who he was. No one would pull him over.

Then, impossibly, the car complained.

He thought that was what that sound was, and the sort of hiccup in the way it drove. He'd never actually had a car give him a hard time before. His other cars wouldn't dare.

But this one barely managed to hold on until he'd pulled it over, and then it gave out completely. 

He gave up on it in turn. It could spend the night by the side of the road if it was going to act like that. He resolved to call a tow truck in the morning. Then he called Skip, and was chauffeured home in Skip's Suburban. He had his own Suburban back in D.C., a gift from his father. 

Maybe he should just drive that. That was him. Not this -- this sudden breakdown and hardship, this stubbornness that the Camaro seemed to stand for. A part of him felt, wistfully, that it would be something to master that. But it irritated him. Maybe he was better off bringing the Suburban down here to be his third car. Maybe that was what he deserved. 

-

That night, St. Mark's Eve, Whelk ignored the Dean's emails about the approaching thank-you-a-thon. The list of names was still rolled in the pocket of his jacket, abandoned. He packed a gun; a flashlight; and a sheaf on notes on the ley line, scribbled between his classes and quick trips to the Aglionby library.

Neeve's tip had been a long-shot, but it had proven fruitful. Not that he followed her advice because he believed in it or trusted her. He followed it because she had a bowl that showed him Czerny dying, and Whelk might have seen that sight every day for the past seven years, but never so crisply. HD television, tuned to one of his worst memories.

But not the worst memory. The worst was still watching them load up the car with his things, knowing the plastic in his pockets was worthless. He had felt scraped raw over it for seven long years. Barrington Whelk, fallen so far that now even his name seemed ridiculous. 

It ended tonight.

He put his things in his briefcase and drove his cheap, shabby car down the backroads, as Neeve had instructed. She wanted him there when the moon was high in the sky. Whelk planned to get there a good hour before than. He thought Neeve was perhaps the real thing, when it came to augury and magic. This did not comfort him.

Once, he'd believed himself invincible. Like any Aglionby boy. Like Dick Gansey. 

God, he hated not believing that anymore. Worst of all, the possibility that he might never be able to believe in it again. What had he killed Czerny for? For this? This was why he saw the spasming legs, the blood pooling in the eye socket. Because it had been a worthless kill, and that made it especially frustrating.

Czerny had not been so bad, after all. Whelk did not like the thought that he had killed him for nothing.

The path that Neeve had told him to find was there, some sixty feet off the main road, but it was narrow and surrounded by greenery. During the day it might have been bearable. But this was night, and the thicket surrounding the road was shapeless and terrifying. Cursing, Whelk lit his flashlight. He was faced with trees. Trees had never interested him. He pressed on.

He thought he knew where she would be, in any case. There were only so many places along the ley line and only one place had any meaning anymore. Whelk just wouldn't recognize it by looking at the trees. He wondered if the body would be there, waiting for him. What a loyal friend he'd picked, back when he'd been a king of Aglionby, and able to pick his friends. He did not have friends now. He had a witch he did not trust, who'd said it would be the best night of his life.

It certainly couldn't be the worst. Still, he stopped and took out the gun, checked it over. If she wanted to trick him, she could join Czerny.

But Neeve, when he reached her, did not look about to trick anyone. She was eating something with the word _organic_ in large cheerful letters on the packaging, and busily arranging her bowls in a clearing between the trees. The bowls did not show Czerny. They did not show anything except sloshy, improbably-purple-pink gunk. This matched her patterned skirt and quilted jacket. She looked like someone's dotty aunt.

But probably she wasn't related to the man she'd trussed up in the middle of the clearing, in the center of her candle-twig-horror-movie pentagram arrangement.

"Barrington," she said, not unkindly. "There you are."

Whelk stared at the man. He was wearing some sort of costume. No, not costume. His clothing was actual, usable clothing. It just seemed like it ought to be a costume, because it was so completely unlike what people in the twenty-first century wore. 

Whelk did not ask who he was. A part of him thought it was obvious, given what Neeve had told him before, though this man did not exactly look like regal Welsh king material. He had patches of sweat around his old-fashioned cowl, he was slim, and his eyes were dark and terrified. Neeve had gagged him, so he did not make a sound.

Neeve tsked as she finished her pentagram preparations. "Barrington," she said. "You're not being very polite. Aren't you going to ask after our new friend?"

"No. Do you want to tell me about him?" snapped Whelk. He was holding his gun in plain sight. Neeve hadn't commented on it. This made him nervous.

Neeve said, "This is Artemus. He is my brother-in-law. Of a kind."

"What does your brother-in-law have to do with wishes and Welsh kings?" 

"Favors," Neeve said.

"What?" said Whelk. Somehow he thought the trees were too animated here, the boughs too lively. There wasn't enough wind to make them move like that, was there?

"It is a favor," Neeve corrected gently, "not a wish. Wording is important, Barrington. Artemus was a contemporary of this Welsh king, and I found him guarding a -- a sort of false treasure."

"False?" Whelk said. 

The trees were definitely moving too much. He thought he could hear something, too. But it couldn't be coming from the trees. 

"You promised me a real treasure," he barked at Neeve now. He wished he was not hearing what he was hearing. It sounded like very, very poor Latin. Trust his shitty job to come back and haunt him at a time like this.

"I promised you a favor," Neeve said. "Whether you use it to get yourself a new fortune is no business of mine. Now sit down and listen, Barrington. This is important."

She gestured at an oversized root. It seemed somehow very alive, a distended limb protruding from the tree. Whelk did not sit on it. Neeve did, smoothing out her skirts.

"I've woken and dealt with Artemus' false trail," she told Whelk. "But there are more things to wake. The line, for one."

" _I_ wanted to wake the line," Whelk growled. This was what had caused some tension this morning.

"Too bad," Neeve said. "As I told you, you simply can't. Did you ever wonder why it didn't work, Barrington? Years ago, when you made your ghost?"

"You said I did it wrong," Whelk said accusingly. The accusation was that, mostly, he still didn't believe her about all this. Mostly he believed she could report him to the police. Mostly he believed that he could prevent that, right now, by shooting her in the face. 

But for a brief moment this morning, checking one of the few books he had left on ley lines (specifically, the one about the British Isles, about Wales), he'd believed in something else.

"It was the wrong way to win the line," Neeve said, not unkindly. "It was the right way to win something else. Sacrifice has such a long and storied history, Barrington. You briefly touched a sleeping king with yours."

Sacrifice. Put that way, it seemed...strangely right. Whelk had sacrificed. He missed Czerny. He wanted to remember Czerny as nothing more than a lackey and nuisance. But he missed the lackey-hood. And it had not been such a nuisance to have someone who might die for him.

"I want to wake the line and take its power," Neeve continued, as though she were announcing the morning's weather, or someone's horoscope. "But the power of the line is so much more powerful when it works in tandem with the power of the king. That's where you come in, Barrington. Did you know that this king was meant to choose someone to receive his power? Artemus couldn't show me who he chose, so I had to hunt around until I found your ghost. And then I knew who was Glendower's chosen."

It hardly seemed real. Whelk did not even want to breathe. It had been so long since things had not been absolutely _shitty_.

"Whoever is the king's chosen," said Neeve, as though she were quoting something, "shall have power over life and death itself."

Whelk shivered. When the skateboard had hit Czerny's cheek, it had made such a crack.

"And so I intend to make an ally of you, Barrington," Neeve said. "My power over the line, and yours over the sleeping king. I think we will work well together."

"We have to wake him first," Whelk said. He didn't like the thought of partnering with Neeve. Everything about her was irritating, from her ancient hairstyle to her modern and sensible shoes. 

"We have to wake the line first," Neeve corrected. She smoothed out her skirt and then stood, and produced a large, purposeful knife from her pocket. Then, smoothly, she plunged it into Artemus' left eye. 

Whelk almost dropped his gun. The muffled shriek of pain that came from Artemus had no effect on Neeve. She looked serene, patient, as she took the bloody knife and sprinkled a few drops of blood or eye or whatever it was on each corner of the pentagram.

"If I were you I would come in here, Barrington," she told Whelk calmly, as though the pentagram were a house or a small rowboat or a tiny private room in which she routinely knifed people in the eye. "When I kill him something dreadful may happen, and you'll want to be safe."

Whelk did not want to go anywhere near her. He was a murderer, and yet this -- it hit him -- was well and truly _murder_. It had seemed so much more right when he'd been the one doing it.

"Barrington," Neeve said.

Something in her voice propelled his feet forward. He realized it a moment too late. There was something about her that was not quite human, and very powerful already. How was this happening? The question came delayed. Neeve was taking her knife and using it to plumb the depths of Artemus' other eye.

"Do you have to do that?" Whelk hissed. Artemus' shrieking, the mysterious and terrified and ungrammatical Latin coming from all around them --

Czerny had been bad at Latin. Oh god. Czerny. Was he here?

"It is an intuition, Barrington. It is a feeling one gets, when one makes a sacrifice," Neeve said. "I am sacrificing my own innocence more than him. I've never killed anyone before. Let me do it my way. Surely you did it your way."

He had done it the simple way. Pick up the skateboard. Beat Czerny with it until it all looked and felt done. He supposed it was intuitive. He took a step back as Neeve carved off first one hand, then the other.

"Hands and eyes," she hummed. "Hands and eyes."

Whelk wanted to put the gun down and cover his ears, because the shrieks and strange whispers were getting to be so much. He didn't. He watched instead as Neeve plunged the knife into Artemus' heart.

Thunder. A crack, like the crack of the skateboard hitting Czerny's cheek. The ground upset, uneven. Whelk threw himself onto it and thought he heard the rushing of some kind of stampede, the sound of the entire forest coming alive, becoming dangerous. He kept seeing Czerny on the ground next to him, the blood pooling out of the eye, the ruined cheek. He let go of his gun now and did cover his ears, tuck in his head, as though this could make it go away. The ground would not stop moving.

When it did, he looked up and there was Neeve. She looked serene as ever. 

"Is that it?" he managed. "Now do we get Glendower? After you sacrificed that guy?"

"I sacrificed my innocence," Neeve said. "And now, I sacrifice my good word. You see, I had no intention of letting you keep the king's favor just because you might have it now, Barrington."

She lifted her knife. 

Whelk reacted. He couldn't find the gun, but he was three times her size and he'd done this before. This time it wasn't a skateboard but the nearest bowl, brimming with something murky and purple. He let it slosh over himself as he grabbed it and smashed it against Neeve's kneecap. She went down with a strange absence of sound, tripping over Artemus' corpse. Whelk held on to the bowl and kept hitting her with it, watched her hands over the knife grow slack, tried not to watch what happened to her skull.

He already had the memory of Czerny. He didn't want to deal with this, too. Fucking St. Mark's Eve.

But as he beat Neeve to death, something slipped into his mind. He did not immediately understand _what_ , but it told him, in no uncertain terms, to make the line his. To bargain.

"How?" he said stupidly. "How?"

He heard mumbled Latin in his ears again, but it was fearful and angry and it was not his answer. The thing that had slipped into him from Neeve was his answer. Neeve was not a good sacrifice, because he had already killed. He had no innocence to give. What did he have?

"Regret," he said out loud. He looked at the trees.

"Take it!" he shouted. He did not want it. He did not want to think of Czerny. It was just that for seven miserable years, he hadn't been able to help it.

And the thing in his mind said. _Good._

The thing in his mind was, of course, the false treasure Neeve had found. Whelk understood it now. Both false, and a treasure. 

When the line shifted for the second time that night, flooded him instead of Neeve, he scarcely noticed the signs. He told the thing, "I want that wish," and no one fucking corrected him and told him to say 'favor' instead.

The trees, it turned out, did not want to lead him to the king. They did not want him to have the favor. But they had not counted on the thing inside Whelk's mind, and the power it gave Whelk. The forest had no choice but to give him what he wanted.

 _What is it you want most?_ the thing in his mind asked, as Whelk stood shakily and stepped toward the new cave that had appeared, just beyond the pentagram.

He nearly tripped over something that had fallen out of his pocket. A sheaf of papers. The names for that fucking thank-you-a-thon. Whelk lifted his foot and stared at them dumbly for a moment.

Helen Brooke Gansey  
Isabella Helen Prescott Gansey  
Richard Campbell Gansey II  
Richard Campbell Gansey III 

With the toe of his boot, he outlined the last one. 

Yes. That. That was his wish. 

-

In the morning, Gansey's housekeeper, Nadia, woke him.

She rarely did this. Gansey had natural self-discipline and could very well make sure he was up himself. He tried to parse what she was saying, nervous and fast, and recalled his father's admonitions to make sure she was legal. Her accent was very heavy. He waved her gently away and reached for the glasses on his bedside table. They did not make her words more intelligible, but they did make her form clearer. He took in her terrified face and wondered if maybe she wasn't legal after all. He would hear about this from his father, a gentle rebuke. He sighed when he thought of it.

"One moment," he told her, and felt around for his watch on the bedside table. Twenty-two minutes to practice. Two minutes until his alarm went off. He would have been up soon anyway; he always woke a minute or so before the alarm. He waited. It rang. He turned it off.

"Mr. Maitland is downstairs now," Nadia was saying, "but he isn't stopping those men!"

This made little sense. Thornton Maitland was one of his mother's people. He had nothing to do with Nadia. Also, he was very good at stopping whatever the Ganseys wanted stopped. This was, in fact, the only reason Gansey's mother liked him. Gansey had never been partial to Maitland, but that did not mean he had to be impolite. He pulled on a clean pair of slacks and his Top Siders and a decent shirt, ignoring Nadia, and went to the bathroom to brush his teeth. He texted Skip on the way, to let him know that he might be late. 

Nadia pulled him back, towards the stairway, frantic. Her hands were cold and shaking. Gansey stared at them pointedly until she removed them from his arm.

"Mr. Maitland wants to speak to you now, or he says the men will have to come up," she whispered.

Gansey took pity on her. 

"You can stay here, or let yourself out through the back if it comes to that," he told her. He would deal with this on his end, regardless of what the penalties would be. He didn't want his housekeeper dragged away by immigration officials in broad daylight.

But the men downstairs did not behave like immigration officials. Some behaved like moving men, seizing couches and pool tables. Some behaved like thieves, rifling through boxes and desks. Maitland stood in the center of the room, watching them impassively, doing nothing to prevent it. The one part of Gansey's brain that was not utterly confused told him that he ought to speak to his mother. She didn't pay Maitland to do nothing.

"Richard," Maitland said. The name itself was solid proof that Maitland should not be here. Anyone who dealt with Gansey regularly knew to call him Dick, or Trey. Once or twice there had been a disastrous 'Ricky,' but they had been gently shuffled away. Maitland took his arm now.

"These men have to speak to you," Maitland said. "I will be going with you. Let me do the talking."

One of the men came down the back staircase. He did not have Nadia by the arm, as Gansey might have supposed. He had Gansey's car keys. He tossed them at another man and said, curtly, "For the cars."

"Those are my cars--" Gansey began, about to head them off. Maitland held him back.

"Richard," he said uncomfortably, "there have been some very serious allegations against your mother."

Gansey stared at him, uncomprehending. "So tell _her_ that." 

"We can't," Maitland said. "There was an accident in Ischgl. You're all that's left, Richard."

This made even less sense than the men who were currently boxing up Gansey's televisions. Maitland made him sit down on a chair in the kitchen -- remarkably, one that had not yet been seized -- and outlined several things that continued to make no sense to Gansey. He stressed that he was working on things. He stressed that he could not predict any of the outcomes. He stressed that the accusations were very serious. He stressed that his fee was of course already worked out, had been worked out, they could not touch that, so Gansey was not to worry about that.

"Why would I--" Gansey began. Somehow, through the haze of _mother_ and _father_ and _Helen_ , he was starting to realize what Maitland was trying to tell him, but it still made no sense. 

"There are trusts," he said again. "They can't touch th--"

"This time they can," Maitland said. "That's what I'm trying to tell you. These are not normal circumstances, Richard. It's not just the potential treason, the embezzlement--"

 _Treason?_ Gansey's mind said. _Embezzlement?_ It could not wrap itself around the words. There was no reason for a Gansey to do any of that. Ganseys had fought in the American Revolution. 

"--there are inquests she took part in, people whose lives they're saying she might have ruined. Does the name 'Ambrose Whelk' mean anything to you?" Maitland said. "Because she robbed him of everything, just like they'll do to you, Richard. So let me do the talking."

Gansey had no words, in any case. He'd always felt like he'd had them before. But now he wondered if they were being boxed up with the cars, the houses, the clothing and tables and carpets. With his parents and Helen.

Because this was such a delicate situation, and because his mother was not around to defend herself, and because whatever happened he was still a _Gansey_ , Maitland managed to avoid having him transported all the way to D.C. for questioning. It happened in a back room of the local police station, commandeered for the time being by federal agents. They outlined what they believed had occurred, what the state would be trying to prove, what the state was entitled to seize (which was nearly everything), and what Gansey was now entitled to. 

Gansey knew everyone was trying to say it to him clearly, and he knew that Maitland was doing his best to explain along the way. But none of it would stick. It buzzed around him in a great cloud. He wanted it all to go away. He wanted to be in the Alps with his family, and he wanted his mother to press her thumb to his brow and smooth away the crease there.

"He will not leave the state of Virginia," Maitland was saying. "He will of course cooperate, and tell you everything he knows."

But Gansey already knew he didn't know anything. They were suggesting impossible things, things that did not accord with his mother or his family or him.

"You have to leave him enough to get by, for God's sake," Maitland was saying. "At least enough to pay for a cell phone, so that he can communicate with us as we sort this out!"

Maitland secured what everyone seemed to think were very reasonable terms. Gansey didn't, but then no one was checking in with him at that point. This was perhaps the worst thing yet, because he was not used to that. 

He was allowed to go back to the subdivision for some clothes, which Maitland secured for him by reason of it being tangible personal property. Gansey knew that at one point he'd known the significance of this, but at this point he was not processing it. Most of the other property had by now been taken outright, or rendered inaccessible for the time being. The men were clearing out the third floor now. He rescued some shirts, some shoes, the jacket he'd been wearing the night before, which still had his wallet and the keys to the Camaro in it.

"How can they do this?" he asked Maitland. Even through the fog settling around him, he knew this was a stupid question. Maitland had been trying to explain how all morning. 

Maitland looked at him and Gansey saw something in his eyes that he'd never seen before, from anyone.

"You can still go to school, Richard," he told Gansey gently. "You're paid through the year, though if you have need additional fees for extracurriculars, then we can't help you with that. But they haven't seized everything. We'll fight to let you keep the rest of it, alright? We're fighting for you. You're not alone."

But he was. Helen, his mother, his father -- they were gone, and Gansey understood that it had been some work for Maitland to even have them properly cremated, with everything that had come out about his mother. Maitland had said, "We have to figure out where you can go," and had his staff make calls about it all throughout the day, but the calls came up empty. Gansey could not understand how. The house in D.C. had always been brimming with people, his mother's circles overflowing with admirers and family and distant family who wanted to be less distant because they were also admirers.

But now no one would answer. Maitland said the accusations were all over the news, that everyone must have heard by now.

They let Gansey keep some money to pay his phone, a payment Maitland recommended that he prioritize, so that they could communicate. Numbly, Gansey promised to do that. He also had his credit cards, but they were useless, according to Maitland, and he had maybe two hundred dollars in cash, and the shoes on his feet, and the Camaro keys in his pocket.

He wondered briefly if he should tell anyone about the Camaro, which they seemed to have overlooked. Probably because he'd left it by the side of the road last night. But he didn't want them to take that, too.

"I'll see about you staying at the school," Maitland said.

Going to Aglionby after all this seemed wrong, profane. Like pretending his world wasn't falling apart. He shook his head mutely. Maitland steered him gently to his own car, a patient blue Lexus.

"Where should I take you then, Richard?" he asked gently. "If you'd rather come back to Arlington--"

Gansey shook his head again before even realizing he was doing it. It was bad enough to see them strip and seize the house in the subdivision. He didn't want to see his parents' house stripped bare either. 

He didn't know how or why, but he managed to tell Maitland, very firmly and evenly, in the voice he used for speaking to reporters about his mother, the directions to the roadside where the Camaro sat. He explained about the car on the way there. He asked, politely, if he could please be allowed to keep it.

For some reason, he felt as though he needed to keep it. 

Maitland stared at him in surprise.

"This car -- it's important to you?" he said.

Gansey nodded.

"I'll try my best," Maitland said. "We still need to think about where you're going to stay, Richard, and how you're going to communicate with us. You can take your meals at the school for now, but--"

"Please make the arrangements to pay for the phone," Gansey said, "with whatever I have left. Thank you for all your work in this. I really do appreciate it. Please don't worry about my lodgings. I have some money for the night, and I will arrange that on my end. I want you to work as hard as you can on getting it all back. Thank you."

He was saying the words without really thinking about them, robotic and courteous. He felt weightless, as though something had carved away layers he'd never even known were there before. What was left, he realized with some surprise, was a person who did not want to inconvenience Maitland right now. Not really. He did not know what was happening, but he knew he would feel disgusted with himself if he made demands, if he did not respond appropriately, if he left Maitland thinking he could not handle this.

He didn't like letting people down. He didn't know if maybe he had let someone down before, and now this was happening. His brain told him it could not all be his fault, but he could hardly listen to his brain right now. 

Maitland left him by the Camaro. 

"Call if something happens," he told Gansey. "We're working for you, you understand?" 

Gansey nodded curtly.

"Drive this to a bed and breakfast or something," Maitland said. "A motel. Take some time. You can call me tomorrow morning anytime, and we'll talk then."

Gansey nodded.

But when Maitland drove away he realized, with a sinking feeling, that he could not drive the Camaro anywhere. The Camaro would not work for him. And for some reason this made his heart beat too fast, his hands tremble. He steadied himself against the car and felt sweat seep into his collar and became disgusted with himself. He did not even feel as though he were himself -- he felt miles away. He resolved distantly to use the school showers; if he kept feeling like this, sweaty and nauseous and like he might throw up, he would need to clean himself. He might have less money at the moment, but that was certainly no reason to parade around in a sweat-soaked collar.

At some point his breath was coming in very fast, and he slid down next to the car and sat in the dirt. He rested his head on his duffle, with the few personal effects he had been allowed to rescue. He couldn't tell how long he stayed like that.

He heard very soft footsteps, leaves crackling, someone approaching. He thought it would be a police officer or something. He wondered what he would say to them.

But it was an Aglionby boy, albeit one Gansey didn't know very well. He thought he'd seen the boy before. It took a few minutes for recognition to set in. The boy waited patiently until it came to Gansey, parts of his pale face hovering just beyond the edges of Gansey's glasses.

"You were sitting on the sign yesterday," Gansey said. 

The boy still hadn't cleaned his face. Gansey had the urge to reach out and wipe away the smudge on him, but something told him not to. He let it alone.

The boy shrugged. 

"This is your car," he told Gansey. It might have been a question, or it might merely have been a statement. Gansey hoped it was a statement.

The boy sat next to Gansey in the dirt. He added, "I'm Noah."

Gansey could have said he was Dick, or Trey, or even Maitland's 'Richard.' But he did not feel like any of those people. He felt like what he always thought of himself as: a Gansey. Disgraced. Alone. But still just that, only now it was whatever you had left when you took the money away.

Horribly, he wasn't even sure what that was.

"I'm Gansey," he told Noah.

"I know," Noah said. "Your mother's all over the TV, so everybody is talking and thinking about you."

This was not comforting. Gansey closed his eyes. He wanted to sleep. He wanted to scream. He had nowhere to do it. He had no house, he had no place. He was something left along the roadside, like the car. 

A very cold hand closed in on his. Gansey's eyes snapped open. It was Noah. He draped his freezing hands on Gansey's warm one very loosely, and Gansey wondered if this was supposed to be some kind of cheer. Something about Noah seemed permanently rumpled, so teenage that it did not hold together quite right. He did not seem like the sort of person to be very good at cheer.

"I like your car," Noah said. "I like what it says about you."

"I think I'm going to have to sleep in it," Gansey admitted. "Not unless you have a place for me to stay."

Noah shook his head. "Not me," he said. "You can't depend on me."

At least he was honest. Gansey squinted down at his pale, limp hands. He shook them off and stood, digging the keys to the car out of his pocket.

"You're very cold," he told Noah. "Are you sure you don't want to come in to my new home?" It was a bad joke. He didn't feel up to jokes. He was only trying to be cheerful. He didn't want Noah to feel bad about how bad he was at cheering people up.

Noah, luckily, had a strange sense of humor. 

"Sure," he said, shrugging. "I can't help being cold, though. I've been dead for seven years."


	2. Chapter 2

The morning after the thank-you-a-thon, Adam Parrish was exhausted. 

The same phrase swam before his eyes, over and over. Only the numbers changed. Thank you for your five-thousand dollar contribution. Thank you for your ten-thousand dollar contribution. Thank you for your thirteen-thousand dollar contribution. This paid for his partial scholarship. He should have been grateful; he should have meant each and every thank you.

They were all dust in his mouth.

His thank you shift had begun right after school and continued until it was dark out. He'd worried about having enough time to get home before his father discovered he was not working. His accent had bled into every syllable. _Would you like to donate more?_ So right away they knew from listening to him what he was. 

Then he'd come home and been reminded of his responsibility to cover the electric bill. Adam was using lights at night to do his schoolwork. It was driving up the bill. His arm still smarted where his father had shoved it against the corner of a cabinet. 

"Nothing comes free, Adam," his mother had said noncommittally, when he'd asked her for some gauze. The edge of the cabinet had scraped a deep enough line that he'd thought he should attend to it sooner rather than later. He was good at first aid. He'd just needed some gauze. But she had only paper towels to give him, and those were running low, so he'd given her some money to replace the whole roll. His father had watched this from the couch. After that he'd left Adam alone.

It was not the worst night he could have had after taking off work and not telling them. But he still had schoolwork to do, and then a shift at the trailer factory in the morning. When the shift was over and he ducked into the office to change, he barely had the energy to pull his school sweater over his head, let alone make it to his bike and ride all the way to school.

He made himself keep going. He had to keep going. Otherwise none of it was worth it -- not the thank yous, not the work, not the lights on at night or the ten thousand dollar contributions people apparently made on his behalf. 

He was so tired that his back ached, and his head ached more. The pain in his arm felt dull and normal next to that. He wished, not for the first time, that he were not so used to this. Other people were not used to this. It was seven in the morning, and he was exhausted, and this was normal. It was not supposed to be normal. Someday it would not be, he told himself. He put his energy into pedaling and repeated the word. Someday. Someday.

Someday got him as far as the turnoff at Carter Road, and then it ran out. Some days were like that. Adam hated those days. He focused on the familiar shabby houses tucked away from the roadside, the trash piled at intervals, the abandoned and gutted cheap cars. Henrietta. If the promise of the future could not motivate him, then the threat of the present would have to do. 

This was Adam, the dirt and dust he was made of. He hated it. He would leave. He would.

Today, though, there was a new sight along the road. Out of place. Luridly orange. And standing next to it, someone who looked a great deal like Dick Gansey.

It could not be Dick Gansey, so Adam kept on pedaling. But then his brain caught up to him, so he stopped. He turned and squinted back at the person standing by a 1973 Camaro. 

Dick Gansey. Wearing glasses. No. Gansey did not wear glasses. He must have been born with perfect vision. Life did not give people like Dick Gansey noticeable defects. 

But it was him. Those glorious all-American good looks were not the kind you forgot. Even if now Gansey's face was uncharacteristically uncertain. He'd popped open the hood of the car. Whatever was inside seemed to puzzle him.

Adam turned the bike around. This was stupid. He knew it was stupid. Dick Gansey could not need his help. Adam tried to think of what to say, how to come away without looking stupid. He told himself that he would make an offer -- that was all. And then he would go to school and forget about it. He and Dick Gansey were not meant to cross paths. Life had placed Dick Gansey on an entirely separate path, possibly a path bordered with hedges and and fountains and three-car garages full of Porsches.

"Hello," Gansey said, noticing him at once, focusing on his sweater. "Hello. You go to Aglionby."

Adam made himself look directly at Dick Gansey, and he made his voice as accent-free as possible.

"Do you want me to take a look at your car?" he asked. "I can probably fix whatever's wrong with it."

Gansey's face brightened immediately. It was such an unexpected reaction that Adam couldn't suppress a strange pleasant twinge. He got off his bike, then stepped up to the hood and looked inside. It was easy enough to diagnose the problem. He'd seen cars that were utter wrecks, and this Camaro was not that. It was a worn, defiant, loud sort of thing, though. Not at all the kind of thing he would have associated with a person like Dick Gansey. 

"I'm useless with this kind of thing," Gansey said now, leaning over Adam's shoulder.

Adam shrugged. He would not have expected Dick Gansey to be good at it. Gansey probably had people to do this for him,

It was quick work, anyway. Debris in the air filter intake box, leaves and dirt. Adam cleaned it out. It made his hands dirty. but after his shift at the factory he was dirty already. He fitted the filter back in and then said, "Alright. Try it now."

Gansey gave him a peculiar look as he stepped towards the driver-side door. It made Adam feel self-conscious, like he'd revealed too much. As far as he knew, only one or two people at Aglionby knew he worked as a mechanic. No one else knew he worked at all, much less cared what he did. It wasn't as if he ever spoke to anyone there. He went in; kept his head down; ignored all their hateful, oblivious privilege; and that was that. 

Now he'd slipped and shown his roots. Dick Gansey was looking at him pensively for it. Adam turned away.

"At least let me give you a ride as thanks," Gansey said.

Thanks? Adam knew who really owed thanks here. He owed Dick Gansey -- _thanks for your fifty-thousand dollar contribution_ \-- and just the thought of it choked going down.

He swung onto his bike, shaking his head.

"I'm Gansey, by the way," Gansey said.

"I know," Adam said. He shared four classes with Dick Gansey. But when Adam wasn't fixing Dick's car, Adam was beneath Dick's notice.

"Well," Gansey said politely, "I'm feeling like an absolute lout because I don't know your name."

"Adam Parrish," Adam said.

That was supposed to be it. That should be enough. Someday it would be. Someday trailer-born Adam Parrish would be enough all on his own, just his name enough. But today was not that day, and today Adam couldn't help himself. It was horrible to be worth Dick Gansey's time only when he was fixing Dick Gansey's car.

"We take Latin together. And AP Physics. And English. And--"

"World Religions!" Gansey said, snapping his fingers. It was a supremely smooth and elegant gesture on him. It looked like he was calling for a porter. He unlocked the door to the Camaro, said, "Get in, Adam." Then held out the keys and added, "Open the trunk. Put your bike in the back."

Impossibly, Adam did this. A part of him did not want to, but a bigger part of him was a traitor to himself. He wanted to know what Dick Gansey was doing here by the side of the road, why Dick Gansey owned a car like this, even why Dick Gansey owned a pair of wire-rimmed glasses. None of this fit with what Adam knew of Dick Gansey. 

He tossed his bike over a designer duffel that probably cost as much as the down payment on the Parrish house. Then he climbed into the passenger seat. The Camaro had no trouble starting now. 

"You're very good with cars," Gansey told him approvingly. He had only seen Adam work on the one car, but somehow the way he said this made it an absolute fact. Adam was good with cars. Adam had already known that, and still he marveled at Gansey's ability to firmly set out the parameters of the universe like this. This was something boys like Dick Gansey picked up early, he thought. Adam would maybe never learn the trick. 

He looked at his hands in order to avoid admiring Gansey's car too openly.

"Sure," he said. 

"Where did you learn to fix things?"

"Work."

It felt like a perverse victory, admitting to Dick Gansey that he worked. 

_I was born in a trailer, and I work three jobs, actually. And I still fixed your car when you couldn't._

He covered his mouth with a hand and stared out of the window to avoid saying any of that. Henrietta seen from a car like this was not like Henrietta seen from a bicycle. It was behind glass. It could not hurt him. 

He closed his eyes and refused to become accustomed to this kind of thing.

"Can I ask--" Gansey began. "You didn't see a boy when you were biking past, did you? This morning? One of us."

He had to mean an Aglionby student, because that was the only _us_ both he and Adam belonged to. Adam opened his eyes and shook his head.

"Sort of smudgy?" Gansey said. "Fair? Rumpled? Wispy, I should say. His name is--"

"Noah," Adam said.

He knew Noah, of course. He wouldn't have thought Dick Gansey knew Noah. Noah was peripheral. Adam was not even sure he knew his last name, or that any one did. Noah had less of a social presence at Aglionby than Adam did. There were maybe three students in the entire school that Adam had never once been jealous of, and Noah was one of them. Not because Noah was bad. Simply because of his Noah-ness.

"Do you know him?" Gansey said excitedly. "Are you friends?"

"I wouldn't say that."

"He was very good to me last night. Then I fell asleep and when I woke, he was gone."

Adam tried and failed to come up with logical scenarios in which Noah had done anything for Dick Gansey, at night, and then fallen asleep with him. The thought experiment made him a little light-headed.

But when they pulled into Aglionby, it was clear that Gansey was not lying or messing with him. Noah sat in the parking lot waiting for them, looking faded and dirty, which was usual for Noah. Adam nodded at him as he got his bike out of the trunk and tied it to one of Aglionby's many picturesque antique lampposts. Entering Aglionby was always like entering another world, a perennially _old_ world, and in some ways Noah, bobbing around the edges, had always seemed like a fixture in that world. Maybe it made sense that Gansey knew him. Maybe everyone knew Noah. Adam felt ashamed for thinking of him as somehow set apart. Probably only Adam was like that.

"Noah," Gansey said. "Come to breakfast with us."

Adam didn't know how it had become a specific kind of _us_. But both he and Noah fell into step a little behind Gansey, as though it were perfectly natural to have breakfast with him. Adam told himself it was fine. He'd been taking his breakfast at Aglionby lately anyway. He didn't take enough meals at Aglionby. A part of him hated having all the food multi-million dollar alumni donations could buy spread before him every morning. But if his parents ever realized that Aglionby offered three meals per day, his mother would have a few choice words about Adam sponging off of what there was at home. His father would have more than choice words.

So, when he could make mealtimes, when he was not working through them, Adam would grab what he could. He would wolf it down as quickly as possible at one of the study tables near the stairwell, away from the main bustle of the dining hall. Aglionby's dining hall was a fearsome place, divided into distinct tribes. The wealthy West Coast types had the table near the balcony. The wealthy Vancouver types had the table near the salad bar. The wealthy New Jerseyans took a spot near the corridor to the study tables, and the wealthy New Yorkers claimed territory underneath the central chandelier. Gansey's group, of course, ate by the massive fireplace. Fitting, for the kings of the school. 

Adam had a brief, panicky feeling that Gansey might invite him there. He shouldn't have worried. As they reached the bagel bar, the group by the fireplace rose to greet them. Tad Carruthers, Skip Whittaker, all the rest of them. 

"Trey," Carruthers said. "Listen--"

Gansey did not immediately listen. He waved Carruthers off and turned to Adam instead, which meant that the whole group turned to look at Adam. At least three pairs of eyes discovered the poorly-mended tear in Adam's secondhand school sweater. 

This didn't matter. It didn't matter. Or it wouldn't matter, someday.

"Adam," Gansey said now, said very commandingly. "Come sit with us."

"Trey," Tad Carruthers said, before Adam could find a way to say no. "Pinter wants to talk to you."

The school guidance counselor. Adam could not understand why he would want to speak to Gansey. There was nothing wrong with Gansey. Adam, of course, had been sent to his office multiple times. Pinter liked to ask about the bruises, and he liked it even more when Adam gave him logical reasons to write the bruises off as accidents or clumsiness at the trailer factory.

Gansey grimaced. It was a peculiar thing on his handsome face, a thing that Adam felt did not belong there.

"Now?" he said.

"Yes," said Skip Whittaker, his tone uncompromising. Gansey's eyebrows climbed up a fraction, but he gave Adam a small nod and, after carefully wrapping a bagel in a napkin, left the dining hall.

After he was gone there was no talk of Adam sitting with anyone. The crew team resumed their usual place. Adam looked around belatedly for Noah -- Noah had been with them, he thought -- but he was nowhere to be found. So Adam wrapped up his own food and took it to the study tables in the corridor. He cracked open his physics textbook and tried to make sense of it despite the fact that exhaustion was overtaking him again.

Or. No. Not exhaustion. Adam could work through exhaustion; he'd managed it enough times by now. It was Gansey that was distracting him now. When he tried to focus on electrostatics, all that came to mind was that vision of Gansey by the roadside, shoulders slumped, face defeated. 

He was staring into space without realizing it, and then, horribly, he was not staring into space but staring at the glass doors at the end of the corridor, the ones that led to the dining hall. Someone behind the doors waved. It was not a someone Adam wanted to wave back at. 

There were perhaps three students in the entire school that Adam had never once been jealous of. Noah was one. Joseph Kavinsky was undoubtedly another. He rose and pushed open the doors into the corridor, followed by Lynch, as always. Lynch was the third student Adam refused to envy. When Lynch was with Kavinsky, Adam could not decide which of the two he hated more -- Kavinsky for being outright terrible, or Lynch for always bobbing in his wake. They were a pair: Kavinsky sharp, Lynch savage. Kavinsky a loud brute, Lynch a silent thug.

Mostly silent. It was better when he was silent.

"Poor boy," he said now, by way of greeting. He rested a foot on one of the chairs at Adam's study table and then leaned over it. This would have looked stupid if anyone else had tried it, but from Lynch it looked magnificently dangerous.

"That's original," Adam told him.

"And accurate," noted Kavinsky. "But hey. You're not the only one now, are you?"

Adam had no idea what he meant by that. He refused to even dignify Kavinsky with a look. All his looks now were reserved for Lynch. Normally Adam was good at ignoring him, but when Lynch looked at him this challengingly, Adam refused to be the one to look away.

"What does he mean?" he asked Lynch stiffly.

Lynch gave a nasty grin. Splendid white teeth. Maybe a forked tongue in there somewhere, though. Adam was so tired of him. 

"I mean King Dick, fuckwad," Kavinsky said. "Dickample Gansey."

Lynch said, "Not a king anymore. That's probably why he was talking to you this morning."

Then he was leaving down the hall, forcing Kavinsky to follow him for once. Adam blinked after him, trying to make sense of what he'd said. Now he did look at Kavinsky, if only for an explanation.

"Fuck, are you so poor you can't even afford a radio?" Kavinsky said lazily. "A TV? A fucking _newspaper_? Your new friend lost everything. Maybe he can move into the trailer with you."

He was off down the hall after Lynch. Adam waited until he could not hear their footsteps anymore, then scarfed down the last of his bagel and put away his textbook. He took the stairs three at a time to the school's main computer lab. He logged onto the nearest open console. He clicked past the school homepage, typed -- G A N S -- into the toolbar at the top. Those four letters were all it took.The Gansey family had fallen fast and hard and very publicly, and the only bright side to their situation was that three of them were no longer around to see it. 

Skiing accident.

None of it fit the boy Adam had met this morning. None of it. Even slumped and in glasses, Dick Gansey was still Dick Gansey, a prince through and through. And he had not hinted at any of this. He'd been pleasant, grateful, magnanimous. He'd never mentioned that, a little over twenty-four hours ago, his entire family had died and he'd lost all his fortune.

 _Not such a king anymore,_ Lynch had said. _That's probably why he was talking to you._

Lynch was known around school for always telling the truth, but Adam knew him outside of school too. Adam thought he was full of shit. 

Gansey was not in their shared classes that morning, though Adam desperately wanted to talk to him. Latin was cancelled -- Whelk did not seem to be available -- so Adam did not see him then, and in the afternoon he did not share any classes with Gansey. Once classes were over, he had to leave right away to make it to the garage in time, so he could not track Gansey down then. Instead, he found the Camaro, right where Gansey had left it. He pulled out a piece of paper and pen and --

What? What could he say to someone who'd had everything, and lost it all? Adam could not even wrap his head around it. He knew that people went from riches to rags all the time; it was easier than going from rags to riches. But he did not think people were supposed to go through that and emerge _pleasant_.

Because he was short on time, he wrote:

Thanks for the ride,  
Hope the car works fine.  
Let me know if it doesn't.  
\- Adam

He shoved it through the open drivers' side window, and watched it flutter onto the seat. Then he went to get his bike. Lynch, predictably, was lying on the grass just beyond, listening to something loud and foul through expensive, oversized headphones.

"Glad to finally have a friend, Parrish?" he said, too-loudly. 

Adam wanted to rip his headphones off and say something back, but thought better of it. Lynch wasn't important now. And what could he say?

Adam did not have a friendship with Gansey. He did not have anything with Gansey. It was clear that he didn't really know Gansey at all.

-

The meeting with Pinter was not terrible. It was merely required. Gansey had lost loved ones, and Pinter was employed specifically to ask about that kind of thing.

The trouble was that, really, Gansey did not know how to respond. He said, automatically, "It's perfectly fine," and then as soon as he said it he realized that it was not fine, not at all.

He had forgotten, for a moment, that they would not be coming back. Actually, he had forgotten all morning. He'd let Adam Parrish, who for some reason he had never noticed before, distract him utterly.

Gansey felt deeply repulsive. He'd never noticed Adam before because he'd never needed to. He'd only noticed Adam because he'd needed comfort, and cheer. He'd needed to feel like things were fine.

Things were not fine. They were not coming back. Ever. Death was terrible because it was so completely final, and they were -- none of them -- coming back.

He was glad that he did not cry in front of Pinter. Instead, he only found it very hard to breathe for maybe twenty minutes. Pinter told him to put his head down, got a nurse, sent the nurse away when she accomplished very little. He patted Gansey awkwardly on the arm.

"You'll be glad to know that tuition was paid through the end of the term," he told Gansey. "That's one thing less to worry about. And as for next year, well. We won't forget your father's generosity while he lived. Or yours and your mother's. We can work something out, I'm sure."

He told Gansey that all the teachers had been notified and that he was permitted to take the day off. The week, even. And to consider Pinter's door an open one. And to consider checking into the school infirmary if it all got to be too much. 

Gansey wanted to know how you knew when it was too much. It felt like too much already. He left Pinter's office in a daze and went back to the dining hall, wondering what he would do with the rest of his day. He wanted to row, he thought. He wanted to forget himself in the exertion. And in fact the crew team was waiting for him at their table, despite breakfast being over and the hall being otherwise empty. 

"Trey," Tad said. He sounded relieved over something.

"Gansey," Skip said. He did not sound terribly relieved.

Gansey looked around at them all, rather than bother trying to parse Skip's tone. Max, Stafford, Stuart, Thompson, Winthrop -- the whole team.

Most of them would not meet his eyes. Tad did. And Max did. But the rest looked away.

"We have a team fundraiser coming up," Skip said then. "Remember?"

"Of course I do," Gansey said. "I planned it."

They did not need to raise funds. That was not the point. The point was to meet all the parents -- Skip's father was a judge, Tad's a banking executive, and Winthrop's the governor of Tennessee. The point was for everyone to know each other more closely. 

Gansey's father had had fond memories of his own boarding school and the allegiances he'd cultivated there. Gansey's mother had said it was networking, plain and simple. And Gansey's father had said no, no. It was friendship.

"Well, Gansey boy," Skip said now. "The thing is, we can't exactly have you there while this is going on, can we? My father has to uphold the law, you know."

Gansey felt something cold douse him utterly. Rage. He was enraged.

"I'm the captain," he said, very clearly.

"About that," Skip said. "We decided to donate some ergs to the school. You know the old ones are crap. So everyone is chipping in three hundred. Can you cover it? Don't you think whoever is team captain should be able to cover it?"

Gansey looked at them all again. Again, they looked away. This time even Maxwell and Tad looked away, Tad shrugging uncomfortably as he did so.

"When?" Gansey said.

"What?" said Skip, looking unnerved.

"When are you donating?" Gansey said. It would not be instantaneous. The Dean would want to make a stink about it. They would have to be interviewed for the school newsletter. 

"The end of the month at the latest," said Skip. 

Gansey said. "I'll have the money then. Anyone else want to challenge my captaincy?"

Now no one could meet his eyes. Something inside Gansey felt dead and horrible. The cowards. He hadn't known they were all _cowards_.

"Very decent of you, Skip," he told Skip coldly, and then he turned on heel and slowly, very slowly, walked away.

He was not running. He was not turning tail. He was heading to the library to charge his phone, so that he could call Maitland. And he would be researching -- Pinter was right. Classes made no sense at a time like this. Better to look at the law, to try and understand what he was facing, how to get his life back.

He had two hundred dollars and a car that no sane person would buy. He could not make any donations at the moment. And if he did manage to make one, they could always demand more. He would not, he thought, be captain for long.

But, oh, god. To lose crew. How could he have thought he didn't care about it? Of course he cared. Crew was who he was. Surely they couldn't take away who he was.

He spent the whole day in the library, missing lunch and nearly missing dinner, only making it in just as the dining hall staff were beginning to clean up. This was fine. He was hungry, but eating was atrocious. He could hardly sit with the team now, and he felt every eye watching him. Henry Cheng whispered furiously, and Joseph Kavinsky laughed outright. Gansey spent enough time piling his plate to let them know that he did not care, that his shoulders were back and his head was high. Then he beat a path back to the library. 

But he came up empty. And it was too soon for Maitland to have any results for him -- it would be months until then, probably. So by the time he made it back to the car he felt sick again, sick of himself, and furious, and scared.

He had not ever been scared like this before. He did not know what would happen to him.

"You're going to go to sleep now," Noah guessed.

Gansey looked up. He was sitting just where he'd been that morning, though Gansey hadn't seen him all day. He still hadn't cleaned the smudge off of his face.

"I have nothing else to do right now," Gansey said.

"Sleep will make the world look better," Noah said. This was a thing Gansey's mother had often said. Gansey didn't really believe in it right now.

"How did you get back to the school on your own this morning?" he asked Noah, as he unlocked the Camaro. "I didn't think you had your own car."

Noah shrugged. 

"I get around," he said. "I think Adam left you something." 

He was right. There was a note on the driver's seat. Adam must have slipped it through the window. Gansey picked it up and read it in the weak light, a blunt, polite missive that was perhaps the best response anyone had given him today.

Noah had by then vanished again, so it was alright to sit in the car, quietly, and cry. 

\- 

The next week was no better. He lived in his car. He ate at the school. He made team practices, but spoke to no one. He showered in the athletic center, in the mornings, when no one was around to see, Pinter kept suggesting that he check into the infirmary for the time being, but then people would see.

It was a new emotion for him, all this shame. 

_I didn't do anything wrong_ , he told himself, when the whispers followed him down the hall.

 _I didn't do anything wrong,_ he thought, when he sat alone at meals, with his back to the team, because their back was to him.

 _I didn't do anything wrong,_ he thought, when Henry Cheng was interviewed for this week's newsletter, and he was politely passed over.

And he said it to himself when he had to go to the laundromat for the first time, and when he saw his money vanish to pay for gas for the Camaro, and when he woke in the middle of the night and had to pee in the woods. That last bit was particularly demoralizing. He was parking a little off the road now, where no passing state trooper could see him, and so there was nowhere to go but. Well. In nature herself. 

He'd never done it before. He wanted to wash his hands desperately afterwards, but of course the car had no sink. He hunted fruitlessly for some hand sanitizer in the glove compartment and trunk, but there was none. He had some shirts and slacks and school sweaters, looking more colorless and bedraggled after their adventure at the laundromat. He wished he had an iron. Maitland had promised to get him part of the the family fortune back, but he would have settled for enough to have his things dry cleaned again. 

That was the hardest thing to get used to. The way everything seemed to make him dirty, and the way that not being dirty cost money. He'd never noticed it before, how sitting on the grass in the green would ruin his slacks. But now there was no one to clean them but him, so he noticed. And he noticed, too, that he couldn't replace stained shirts, or torn belts. Everything he owned had to last him, and thankfully it was good quality, but he had to be so much more careful with it all now.

He did not know if he could last that way. Carefully.

He did know that the money was not lasting. The aforementioned Camaro guzzled it up, and so did the laundry fees. Outside of mealtimes at Aglionby, sometimes he needed a bottle of water. Toothpaste. Floss. It all cost. He watched the two hundred dollars dwindle and learned early on that Maitland could not possibly supplement it fast enough, not under the terms of this strange agreement that kept Gansey from being hauled before a judge and permanently stripped of everything. 

_I didn't do anything wrong,_ he thought every morning. _I didn't do anything wrong._

But it felt as though he had. He'd made a wrong turn. He'd failed to be the right kind of son, or the right kind of captain. Though he knew, intellectually, that very great misfortune did not require any kind of cause. It was terrible precisely because it was so random. 

"Shit happens," Adam said one morning. Not about Gansey's situation. About the Camaro, which had broken down again.

"Why does this keep happening?" Gansey had asked, low, more to himself than to Adam. And Adam had replied with that plainspoken insight that Gansey was beginning to understand was very thoroughly Adam.

"It's an old car," Adam continued. "If you want to bring it by the garage sometime I could take a better look at it, but you should wait until Tuesday. Boyd'll charge you if he sees you bring it in. Tuesday nights it's just me there. I can take a look at it for free."

Adam was very good at evading direct questions about himself, but he often dropped small facts like these into the conversation. As though he thought Gansey might not really want to know about him. As though he thought Gansey had to be broken in gently, only very carefully shown what life was like when you had no money.

Too late for that.

But then Adam was careful about everything. He never ruined his clothes if he could help it, and he made no impulse purchases like water or floss. He peed in the woods without fuss, and he had very patiently taught Gansey how to operate the machines at the laundromat.

Gansey did want to know more about him. 

Certain things were very clear. Adam was elegant-looking, a little alien. He was intelligent, good at solving problems. He was very much on scholarship. He was local. Henrietta thrummed in his throat even when he tried to hide it, and he often tried to hide it. He was busy; he seemed to work multiple jobs. 

And, over the course of a week, he accumulated more bruises than Gansey had managed to collect in all his life.

Now, Gansey could not stop looking at the ugly purple one on his cheekbone. When Gansey had asked about it, Adam had said that he worked at a trailer factory, where there were a lot of heavy machines around. It did not escape Gansey that he'd said absolutely nothing about whether he'd received the bruise from those machines. 

Sometimes, when Adam was bruised like this, he came to school eerily distant, wrapped in a stillness that took him miles and miles away. Gansey did not think that this came from the trailer factory. 

But he learned very quickly that to Adam, privacy was everything. Gansey could understand that. He did not want to discuss that he lived in the Camaro, or that his money was fast running out and that soon he would lose his crew captaincy over it.

That still galled. But Adam's comment gave him an idea.

"You work at a garage?" Gansey confirmed.

Adam nodded curtly. He was half-buried inside the Camaro, arranging and rearranging, possibly performing some kind of open-heart automotive surgery. Gansey thought he could make a good doctor someday. He did not know what Adam wanted to be, though, aside from 'away from Henrietta.' Adam was very matter-of-fact about that. Adam was matter-of-fact about most things.

This made Gansey trust his opinion. 

"I've been thinking about getting a job," he said lightly. He did not know how to explain about the captaincy, so he only said, "There are things I need money for."

Adam made a wry sound.

"Most things are things you need money for, Gansey."

Gansey immediately felt somewhat stupid for putting it that way.

"Well," he said. "What do you think, though? About me getting a job?"

He did not ask the actual question on his mind, which was: isn't this thought a little ridiculous? It felt, if not that, then at least unfamiliar to him. It was like the Camaro. He thought that, if he presented the idea to people, then they would laugh. And he did not want them to laugh.

But Adam only popped his head out and said, simply, "I think it's a good idea." He wiped at a grease stain on his cheek, somehow managing to make it worse, and then lowered his head into the bowels of the car again. Gansey felt something very mollifying spread through him; it had an effect like stepping outside onto the patio during one of his mother's parties, closing the door, and breathing the clean, still air.

"You wouldn't happen to need an extra pair of hands at the garage, would you?" he joked. It was perhaps a joke. Perhaps not. A part of him did want to learn to do what Adam could do, to coax good behavior out of the willful Camaro. 

Again Adam resurfaced, this time to say, somewhat cautiously, "I could ask." He did not look as if he relished the idea of asking, or the idea of working with Gansey for that matter. 

Gansey said, very quickly, so as not to make him nervous, "Nevermind."

Adam relented. "I think they're hiring at Nino's, Gansey. Or they were the last time I was there."

Gansey, too, remembered seeing a help wanted sign in the window. But then he thought that sign had always been there. Nino's was the kind of place that seemed perpetually in need of additional help: the vinyl seating hideously cracked, the floor tiles worse, the strange smells and graffiti in the bathroom, the harassed expressions all the staff seemed to wear. Gansey was not sure he _wanted_ to work there.

He tried not to let it show on his face. He hadn't known Adam for very long, but he didn't think Adam would be too impressed with him if he made his fastidious nature that obvious.

"We could go there for a bit now," Adam said. "This'll be done soon enough. You want to see if we can find Noah and go together?" 

Noah was the other person Gansey had seen a lot of over the past week. He appeared with some regularity, and vanished with just as much. He was odd and retiring and always seemed as smudgy as the first time Gansey had seen him, but Gansey liked him. Noah, like Adam, did not whisper as Gansey walked past, and, like Adam, he seemed terribly truthful where others now rang false. So if he wanted to run around telling people he was dead all the time, then Gansey wouldn't hold that against him.

But once Adam had finished with the car, they couldn't actually find Noah. Noah was in a vanishing mood. Vanishing was clearly something Noah enjoyed. Gansey had tried asking him for his cell phone number once, and he'd only said, "Oh, I haven't had one of those in a while." 

So by the time they were done fruitlessly searching for him, Adam had to go to work. He offered Gansey a fist before he left. Gansey bumped it. The first time Adam had put forward his fist he'd only stared at it stupidly, and Adam had sighed and bumped his own two fists together gently, like he was teaching a small child or a moron. But by now Gansey had the hang of it.

He watched Adam bike away. It made something in him twist up mysteriously. In a very short time, Adam had become the one person he could count on, and Adam was usually too busy to spend any real time with him. This was not like being friends with the team. The team had always had time, or made it.

He wouldn't mourn the team. The answer was to fill his own time. He got in the car and headed for Nino's. It was already late, and by the time he arrived the only cars in the parking lot were a white Mitsubishi and a shark-nosed BMW.

Adam had told him who these belonged to. Adam had a long, detailed mental list of the cars everyone drove, their year of make, their capacity, their destructibility, their foibles and hobbies and best qualities. But when it came to these two cars, he'd only said, "I hate those assholes."

Gansey did not. He had never needed to hate anyone before, so he was not used to it and could only do it for so long before it wore at him. And he had too much to hate right now anyway -- like Skip, and his dead mother sometimes, and peeing in the woods.

But all the same: he did not like Kavinsky or his lackey. There was not anything likable about them. 

Kavinsky's whole group was there, lodged in a corner booth. Aside from Lynch, Gansey did not actually know their names. Jiang, he knew. Maybe it was Jiang. And then maybe one named Scott and one named Duck and one who always looked a little blank, as though he were operating on automatic. Which, given what Kavinsky's group got up to, was not all that surprising. Gansey thought he could understand why Adam hated them so much. They did not try at anything, they did not value anything, they had no rules and no attachments and no code. They were somehow honorless, and mean. Mean in a heavy, spiritual sense, not mean as in cruelty, though they were probably that, too. 

He did not bother to greet them as he walked in. He went straight to the hostess, and was relieved it wasn't the one with the ragged sort of shirt that had so captivated the team.

"I notice you have a help wanted sign--" he began.

She didn't look up from whatever she was writing. She said, "Donny handles hiring, but he's out, so you can sit here until he comes back." She gestured at a forlorn wooden bench at her side. Gansey had never sat on it before. It was presumably there to handle high volume times and long waits, but Aglionby boys were always seated immediately at Nino's, so it struck him as somewhat superfluous. He slid onto it anyway and it creaked irritably, as though it were as unused to this as he was.

"When will he be back?" he asked the waitress politely.

She looked up, startled, like this was a shocking question. Her eyelids were basted in very green eyeshadow. It made her look like an exotic bird of the sort that were always cocking their heads. Maybe startled was simply the look she was going for.

" _I_ don't know," she told Gansey. Then she turned to the kitchen and called out, "Blue!" and, with this mystifying pronouncement, was gone. 

Gansey leaned against the back of the bench and waited. He felt as though he'd waited more in the past week than he had ever before. Before, he'd had so much to do -- practices, social events, visits to friends and family, public appearances for his mother. Now, he had nothing to do but wait for calls from Maitland. Clearly, it would be good for him to get a job. It certainly could not be as bad as this eternity of purposeless waiting.

A long, skinny arm shot in front of his nose, dangling a fifty-dollar bill. Several people laughed.

Gansey, who had lost a fortune but neither his self-respect nor his reflexes, ignored the bill and caught the arm. He forced it down onto the bench without even thinking about it, held it there patiently, not hurting, merely firm. But Kavinsky still shrieked until Gansey let him go.

"Fuck!" he said, dropping the bill and cradling his arm. "Fuck! Dick, you asshole."

Gansey chose to ignore this. He turned around and surveyed the whole group coldly. Most of them were not laughing now, but looking uneasily at Kavinsky. Only Lynch was still laughing. Laughter was never laughter with Lynch, though. To Gansey, it always seemed like something altogether more sardonic than that. He remembered that Lynch used to be alright, freshman year or so. Quiet. Flashy new money, but not terrible. It struck Gansey as somehow sad that he'd fallen in with Kavinsky and become...this.

He picked up the fifty-dollar bill and passed it to Lynch anyway. Lynch took it without comment.

"You can use that to tip your waitress," Gansey advised him. 

"Nah," Lynch said, pocketing it. 

"She was a bitch anyway, just like you," Kavinsky said, and continued his litany of swears. Gansey felt himself growing bored with it. He turned back around. Lynch skirted around the bench and crossed in front of him, then was out the door. The rest of the group did not follow until Kavinsky moved after him. 

"I like how you're so poor they won't even give you a seat at Nino's," Kavinsky said as he headed for the door, "I like that, Dick. I really like that. What's it like not to matter?"

"You tell me," Gansey said evenly.

Kavinsky flashed him a grin. "Man, I'm going to fuck you up," he said. Then he was gone. 

The threat did not perturb Gansey. After everything that had happened, he wasn't sure how Kavinksy could possibly make things worse. In fact, even before everything had happened, Kavinsky had never impressed him to any great degree. So he closed his eyes and leaned back again. Maybe if he did not think of it as waiting, but as resting, it would be more endurable. After all, he was hardly resting at night these days. 

There was a flurry of sound near his head, like the hostess was back. Someone said, "Sorry, did Cialina not seat you?"

It was the other waitress, the one with more holes in her clothing than actual fabric. To her credit, the holes were very tastefully arranged, and the overall effect family-friendly. Gansey said, "Hello again."

The waitress stared at him. She seemed to be trying to place him, and Gansey could not blame her. Their last meeting now seemed universes ago, and Gansey cut a sorrier figure these days, his clothing more rumpled, his glasses permanently affixed to his face. He ran a hand through his hair self-consciously. 

The waitress followed the line of his bicep with her eyes, so that was something. 

"You?" she said, after a minute. The _you_ sounded very significant, and Gansey realized with a sinking heart that she, too, must have seen his face all over the news, must have heard about his mother. 

"Me," he confirmed quietly. There was little point in hiding it.

"What do you want?" she said.

Gansey wondered if she thought he was going to embezzle her somehow, on the spot. If she thought he had an act of treason hiding in his pocket. If she assumed he would contaminate this hideous, dingy old place somehow, just by being here. That was what they all thought. His classmates, the crew team. 

Gansey was tired of it.

"I'm waiting for Donny," he told her, as calmly as he could. "I want to take him up on his offer." And he pointed at the help wanted sign crammed into the corner of the window.

"You can't work here," she said immediately. Then she blinked and looked briefly angry, as though even she could not believe she'd said it.

"I hope Donny disagrees," Gansey told her. But he rose anyway. He did not want to wait around in a place that would not have him. He did not want to wait under her watchful eye, and he did not want to see her exchange silent looks with Donny, figuring out the best way to let him down with the least amount of fuss. He went out to his car to wait instead.

His car had a note acked to the driver's side window, and then below that, on the door, a messy series of scratches. He blinked at this, dazed. It took a moment for his eyes to process the scratches as a letter: a large K.

Now he swore. Kavinsky had written _bet u wish u had that 50 now, huh, dick_ , and then freely and terribly destroyed his car. His ugly, wonderful car, the one thing he had been able to keep. The car Adam had worked so hard on. Gansey sank down to the curb, not even caring about ruining his slacks, and buried his head in his hands.

"Um," someone said. 

It was the waitress. She looked distinctly uncomfortable. Gansey wished she wouldn't; it was bad enough that he was unhappy himself, without his mere presence making someone else unhappy.

"It's alright," he said. "You don't need to worry. I won't even ask Donny. It was a silly idea anyway, my working here."

Her face clouded.

"Well, if you think you're too good for it--" she began.

"I think the minute Donny realizes who I am," Gansey said, exasperated, "he won't want to go near me. Just like you."

Her mouth snapped shut. Now she looked puzzled. 

"...and who are you? Who would _you_ say you are?" she asked, after a minute. 

Gansey stared at her.

Horribly, that was the main question, wasn't it? Without his money, without his things, without his friends or his future -- what was he?

"Gansey," he said, after a minute. Then, a little hysterically, just as it hit him --

"That's all there is," he said. 

He buried his head in his hands again. That was it. That was all. 

The waitress made a sound like she was having trouble breathing, and Gansey thought, _Wonderful. Excellent. Now I've met a pretty girl and she's choking to death on the discomfort of it._

He felt as though he owed it to her to get up and prevent this, if only to gently shoo her back into Nino's and away from him. It was not her fault that his life was so unpleasant at the moment.

But before he could get up she was in front of him, gingerly placing a hand on his shoulder. Then, after rolling her eyes and making it clear that she felt _gingerly_ would get them nowhere, she grasped him firmly and said, "Get up."

"Excuse me?" Gansey said. 

She was clearly the kind of person who made up her mind and stuck to it, because although she still looked uncomfortable she said, "Get up. Come on. Come in. We'll talk to Donny."

Gansey let her pull him up.

-

Maura would later tell her that, the universe being what it was, that was really the only possible thing he could have said.

This struck Blue as unfair. Not just to Richard Campbell Gansey III, who probably had no idea that the universe had it in for him, but to herself. She could hardly be expected to turn him away after he'd repeated, almost verbatim, exacly what he'd told her a week ago on St. Mark's Eve.

Told her. Not Orla. It had left Orla delightfully stupefied, her orange painted fingernails clasped over her orange-painted mouth. 

"That's got to mean something," she'd insisted, as they'd driven back to 300 Fox Way. "You're not supposed to see them!"

But she had seen this one. Her ghost. Not-yet-ghost. The spirits of the dead walked on St. Mark's Eve, but they were the coming dead, and Gansey was one of them. Gansey, who she'd known nothing about beyond the hunch of his shoulders and the telltale Aglionby blue of his sweater. 

That did not last long. Henrietta prided itself on its remoteness and did not pay much attention to even local news, but the fall of the Ganseys was a national event. 

"That's your guy!" Orla said excitedly over the weekend, dropping a newspaper on the kitchen table and narrowly missing Blue's yogurt.

"She has a guy?" Maura asked.

"Nope," Blue said, shaking her head. "Nuh-uh." 

It had been a picture of three astonishingly tidy, attractive people on a ski-lift, apparently moments before their eventual demise. None of them looked young enough to be the young man -- the shape of a young man -- that she'd seen on St. Mark's Eve. Two were decidedly female. None was her guy. 

"Seriously?" Maura said. "Guy? I'm so disappointed. I was already telling everyone you were going to spend six years in a yurt with a masseuse named Gina."

"She means my ghost," Blue said irritably. 

And Orla, looking smug, had flipped the page and revealed a very familiar face. Strong jaw, tousled hair. Presidential teeth. Blue choked on her yogurt.

"Richard Campbell Gansey III," Orla announced to anyone who would listen, voice alive with the overpowering juiciness of it. "I bet he goes to Aglionby."

Maura made an unimpressed sound and said, "Ask Calla," and Calla, who worked at Aglionby, made an even more unimpressed sound and said, "It's not like I talk to those boys. It's all I could do to get out of having to do the thank-you-a-thon this week."

Richard Campbell Gansey III did go to Aglionby, but Blue didn't see how he could possibly stay there. The newspaper made no mention of his school or his whereabouts -- and in fact the lack of these details seemed to be driving the TV reporters completely insane -- but it outlined in lurid detail just how much money he had lost. Blue, who'd already met him in person and hadn't liked him at all, couldn't begin to understand why this made her feel sorry. No one _needed_ that much money, surely. But nonetheless. Even Blue wouldn't have wished this on him. 

Not that it mattered. Nothing, aside from the last name, necessarily made him her ghost.

"What if he gets killed in a shootout with the government, and that's why you saw him?" Orla said on Sunday, dropping by Blue's job at the library.

"It isn't a movie," Blue said, annoyed. "No one's shooting him. They're having some kind of inquest or lawsuit or hearing or something."

Orla was undeterred. She popped her head into Blue's room on Monday morning. "What if he dies, like, from the stress of it?" she said with perfect seriousness. "Some people get heart attacks over nothing, you know."

Blue threw a textbook at her, and regrettably missed.

By Tuesday, everyone was ready to throw things at Orla. Over breakfast, she suggested, "What if he commits suicide this year? Not like he doesn't have reason to."

"That's in very bad taste," Maura said immediately.

"It's not unlikely," said Calla, squinting at the latest opinion piece on Richard Gansey's mother. "But yes. Not classy, Orla. Go away."

And Persephone said serenely, "I think Blue would know if she'd spoken to a suicide."

"Would I know?" Blue asked, startled.

"Wouldn't you?" Persephone asked, looking startled right back at the possibility that Blue might not.

The thought stayed with Blue all day. It made an awful kind of sense. There was the hunch of his shoulders to think about, the defeated air. There was the way he'd said, simply, "That's all there is." None of it lined up with the boy she'd met before St. Mark's Eve, the unbearably confident, powerful creature in a piped blazer. But maybe the news articles, the pundits calling for retribution, the radio call-ins about his corrupt mother -- maybe that was what it took. To turn what Blue had met into the ghost who had addressed her.

Blue had always wanted to have a sort of experience like this, the kind Orla and her mother and Calla and Persephone had routinely. An experience of true magical insight. Since she was not a psychic, but merely a kind of amplifier, she'd been half-convinced she would never have this sort of thing happen to her.

But now it was happening and she did not like it. She curled up on her mother's bed Tuesday night and asked, into Maura's nest of pillows, "What if he does kill himself?"

Maura, who was scrying for some reason, despite always saying she was no good at scrying, said, "Blue, even I can't hear you when you're talking to the cushions."

So Blue lifted her head up and repeated herself.

"Does he seem like the kind to kill himself?" Maura said, sighing and setting aside her bowl on the nightstand, where it joined a pack of tarot cards, a tin of Vicks Vaporub, a cup of river water collected at full moon, and some eyedrops. 

"I don't know," Blue admitted. "I don't really know anything about him."

She really didn't. Richard Campbell Gansey III was hard to get to know. It wasn't just that his whereabouts were secret -- Calla had admitted that the school's public safety department had put out a memo about not publicizing his presence and making sure there were no reporters in the area to disturb the other students -- but that nothing about him seemed to add up to a person. It had been like that when she'd met him as well. Glossy, unconcerned, unreal. That was the boy behind her ghost, as far as she could tell.

"You could always track him down and ask how he's doing," Maura said. "That's what I would do."

She would, too. Blue's mother was nothing if not up-front, and Blue had inherited this from her.

But a part of Blue did not want to run around telling someone he would die this year. Besides, generally 300 Fox Way charged for that sort of thing. She said as much.

"He can pay us when he gets his fortune back," Maura said, waving away this concern.

"No one seems to think he will get it back," Blue said.

"Then he can mow our lawn," Maura decided.

"We don't mow our lawn," said Blue.

"I know," said Maura. "That'll be a lot of work for him. It's good value for us."

There was a brief knock. Or rather, a sound that had intended to be a knock, but the knocker had given up and decided to only lightly rest her knuckles on the door and sigh for a bit. Blue and Maura looked up. Persephone stood in the doorway, wearing flannel pajamas and the kind of squishy house slippers that came out of mail-order catalogs for old ladies. She floated in. Blue tucked herself against her mother to make room for her.

"I thought you would come to me," Persephone said, when she was settled on the bed.

"Uh, sorry?" said Blue. Technically she had only the one parent, but theoretically she had three, and sometimes it was hard to know which psychic gift could help her most. Her mother was straightforward about seeing the future in cards, and Calla was psychometric, but Persephone's talents could never seem to be fully explained. Lately she'd been spending a lot of time in Neeve's room, after Neeve's sudden departure, dismantling things with Jimi and warning people away from the mirrors. When Blue had asked, all Calla or her mother would say was that Persephone was much better with traps than they were.

Now Persephone said, "Since we know why you saw him, now we have to talk about the other mirror."

Blue squinted at her. Maura cleared her throat and said, lightly, "You're several steps ahead there." Underneath the lightness there was genuine curiosity, as though she didn't know what Persephone knew, and this made Blue curious too. 

Persephone blinked rapidly several times, clearing her mind. "Ahead or behind?" she asked.

"Ahead," Maura said. "I think."

"Darn," Persephone said mildly. "I thought I had explained already. Or maybe I hoped I did. Or maybe I hoped because that way I wouldn't have to explain."

"Explain what?" Blue said. 

"There's only two reasons for you to see him on St. Mark's Eve," Persephone said, looking at her hands. "Either you killed him--"

"No," Blue said, shaking her head rapidly. She was pleased to see that Maura's head was shaking, too.

"Or he is your true love," Persephone said.

Blue's head stopped shaking. Maura's did too. 

"Oh," Maura said, after a minute.

Because Blue was not intending to kill anyone this year, but that was just it. She did not have to intend it. According to every psychic she had ever met (and she'd met quite a few -- there were conventions and things), when she kissed her true love, she would kill him, and intent had nothing to do with it. 

But she wasn't planning on kissing him. She was planning to help him get a job. Apparently. She tried to tell herself that it was because he cut a sadder figure now, neither tidy nor presidential. But this was not strictly true. He was a little more rumpled. But he looked just as symmetrical and handsome with glasses as he did without, and if his chartreuse polo looked like it had shrunk in the wash, then at least it hugged his arms and chest very attractively. 

And he still had that _glow_. Before, Blue had thought it might be centuries of accumulated familial wealth. Maybe it still was. He was poor now, but the brisk, purposeful way he moved showed that he had clearly not been raised that way.

Blue led him down the hall toward Donny's office and got him a drink of water. It was like leading around a fine, purebred hound, or one of those beautiful horses that cost a million dollars. He nearly ran into Laurence, one of the cooks, as Laurence came out of the kitchen bearing a pie. Gansey made a swift, businesslike movement to direct Laurence down the hall. Laurence, who knew perfectly well where to go, stared in silent respect and then moved where Gansey pointed.

"Stop that," Blue snapped. "He's already working here. You're not yet."

His eyebrows climbed up. He hadn't expected to hear the _yet_. He said, reasonably, "Surely it's a good sign that I already know my way around the place." This was not a question, though it was halfway-phrased like one. Blue began to experience traumatic flashbacks to their first meeting. Maybe she could sit him down on Donny's suspicious-smelling couch and leave him there. Her conscience could live with that.

But when they reached Donny's office he only put his hands in his pockets and sauntered around the small room, examining things with some interest. He took a single tanned finger and flicked the small basketball hoop above the wastepaper basket, then tapped the finger pensively on his bottom lip. Blue had the urge to tell him that this was a converted storage room, not the Sistine Chapel, but then she feared he might start describing exotic European trips or something. She didn't think she could live with that. Particularly because she'd never experience exotic European trips.

"Well," she said. "I'll just leave y--"

"You didn't tell me your name," he said abruptly. "I don't know anything about you."

"Blue," Blue said. It felt like a turning point, though she couldn't say why. Maybe she could. 

_Hello, I'm Blue. I'm not a psychic, but you spoke to me on St. Mark's Eve, and that was your future. I'm not in love with you, but you're probably my true love. I am not planning to kill you, but I'm definitely supposed to kill you._

But she wouldn't. She already knew that she wouldn't, because she was promising herself she would not fall in love with him and she certainly wouldn't kiss him. It was easy to make this promise, because he said, with certainty, "Blue. That's a nickname."

Irritation stabbed at Blue.

"That's my name," she said icily. "Take it or leave it."

"Alright," he said. "Jane's nice. I'll take Jane."

"You can't just give me a new name!" Blue said, hearing her voice rise several octaves and not caring. 

"Well, I can't very well call one of my future co-workers Blue," he said, in a very reasonable tone. He leaned against Donny's desk, putting his hands back in his pockets, commanding and casual all at once.

Blue was beginning to regret helping him, and wondering if she could backtrack somehow. But before she could make the attempt, Donny walked in. His bushy eyebrows crawled up his forehead.

"Hello," Gansey said pleasantly. "I saw your help wanted sign. I've come to apply for a position. I think I'd make a very good waiter. I'm quick on my feet and excellent at small talk."

"The position is for a busboy and dishwasher," Donny managed, when he'd recovered from the chartreuse vision of Gansey taking charge of his office. "Right now Blue and Cialina and Cherry are doing all that work. It's too much for them."

The tapping finger resurfaced. Then Gansey stuck it on his bottom lip for a moment and left it there.

"Ah," he said. "Well, in that case, I think I would make an excellent busboy and dishwasher." Then, quickly, as though he found it personally distasteful to ask. "What's the rate?"

"Seven dollars an hour," Donny said.

Blue rolled her eyes behind Donny's back. She didn't especially like Gansey, but she also didn't like the way Donny always tried to start lower than the actual minimum wage. 

_I get nine-fifty_ , she mouthed. Though she'd had to work her way up to that.

"Ah," Gansey said. "I will need to be paid nine-fifty."

"Seven-fifty," Donny said.

"No," said Gansey, looking briefly confused. "Perhaps you did not hear me. Nine-fifty." He settled against the desk and looked at the ceiling, in what Blue supposed was the pose of a scion used to getting his way. He held up one hand. The hand began to threaten them with some very swiftly-raised fingers.

"One, you said so yourself that you need someone for the position. Two, it is a _combined_ position -- busboy and dishwasher. Three, your primary clientele are Aglionby students. I am an Aglionby student. I know what we like and what we don't, and can be an asset in that regard. Four, I can start at five p.m. every day and stay as late as you like. I live on my own and don't need to be home on anyone's account."

Donny said, "Nine."

"That'll be fine," Gansey said. There was a small furrow in his brow, as though he was unsure that it really was fine. Blue supposed he had no idea that this was perhaps the best starting salary Donny had ever offered. 

"Blue can show you the ropes," Donny said. "We'll get everything worked out when the owner's in tomorrow. Be here at five."

Now Gansey made another of those horrible motions he'd made at Laurence, like he was directing traffic.

"Lead on, Jane," he said briskly.

For a moment, Blue only blinked at him. She realized that either he was her true love, or she was meant to kill him. So either she was meant to kill him, or she was meant to kill him. 

And she'd just invited him into her job. 

-

Gansey had never been bad at anything before in his life. But he was very bad at having a job. 

"You can't be bad at _having a job_ ," Adam said, exasperated, after Gansey came to school dejected following his first night's work.

But Gansey was. It was a terrible joke. Like he'd been waiting all his life to be bad at something without knowing it, only to be bad at the one thing that mattered, the one thing that might allow him to keep his captaincy.

He could not keep track of all the linens, perhaps because linens was a grandiose word. _Napkins_. Napkins balled in cups, mashed onto plates, shoved under tables, abandoned along the floors. It was Gansey's job to clean it all and whisk it all away, and perhaps the most depressing thing was how endless the job proved to be. No sooner had he cleared and mopped one table than another was dirtied, another pack of customers came, another pair of wayward hands spilled condiments on the tabletops and jammed straw wrappers in the cups.

He picked it all out and scrubbed it all and told himself he wouldn't complain. He learned to stack the industrial dishwasher, to handle the mops and the rags for wiping. He thought he didn't need to _learn_ , actually, but somehow he managed to do it wrong the first few times. Blue taught him how to do it.

Blue was a surprisingly patient teacher.

"You're lucky those raven boys have started staying in more to study for their exams. On a busy night, we won't have time for you to be this bad at this," she explained to him, while teaching him how to mop more efficiently.

She was, in addition to being patient and efficient, also sensible and blunt. She did not like raven boys. Gansey was a raven boy. Gansey felt a needling sensation when she said the words: _raven boy_ , as though if you met one you met all of them. 

He tried not to feel it too hard, and mostly succeeded, but sometimes it was like trying not to find the most glaring hole in her shirt. Avoiding it took so much trying that it became blatantly, transparently obvious. Even to Gansey. 

_Oh, what a terrible time for this_ , he thought to himself. Because it was. And because it was a bit like finding Adam. He was noticing this kind of thing now because he wanted so badly not to notice his daily life: the dirty dishes, the filthy floors. The hidden grins' on his classmates faces when he brought them water.

By Saturday night, every boy at Aglionby knew where Gansey was working.

On Saturday night, every boy except perhaps Adam -- who had work of his own -- made sure to appear at Nino's.

Kavinsky and his crowd were predictably bad about it. They upended their water on the floor. Dropped food on Gansey's shoes. Smeared condiments on the seats until Donny threw them out. Gansey had to take a wet rag to everything, clean everything. Donny seemed to hold him personally responsible. But they were not all Kavinskys. Declan Lynch and his crowd were curious and composed about it and left quickly once satisfied (though, Cialina complained, they tipped abysmally). And Henry Cheng was magnanimous in a way that made Gansey feel a keening sort of emotion. Anger. He buried it deep and brought Henry his water.

"Good for you for getting the job, Dick," Henry said. "Who says WASPs are proud?"

And the worst part was that he meant this well. Henry wasn't trying to be insulting. Henry was simply careless, and Gansey had never before been in a position to have someone's carelessness sting. He thanked Henry stiffly, and promised the table that their server would be with them soon.

The crew team came by as well. The day's regatta had been canceled abruptly. Officially because of the weather. Not because of Gansey. But really, probably, because of Gansey. This had split the team further. They came in two shifts. Gansey supposed this was helpful. It told him something about each of them, something he'd never bothered to notice before. Before, he'd liked them all equally. Now, he realized that they did not all like _him_ equally, not at all. 

Tad, Max, and Winthrop refused to stay -- just hurried in and said hello, awkward about it. 

"We just need to use the bathroom," Tad said. "You don't mind, do you, Captain?"

He emphasized the Captain, and clapped a hand to Gansey's elbow very suddenly, as though unsure he would be allowed. Gansey cocked his head at him. Tad flushed.

"Take this," he told Gansey quickly, and he dropped something in Gansey's apron pocket. Gansey's hand closed around it. Money. Quite a bit. 

"As if any of us wouldn't do it for any of the others," Tad said. 

There was something stiff and formal in his tone, but something gallant, too. Tad was like Gansey. He had generations of breeding, generations of gallantry. It did not make him priggish, not any more than it made Gansey priggish. It gave them a Kentucky-derby formality with each other, a degree of mutual respect, an ability to not talk about this.

Gansey closed his eyes and said nothing. Tad nodded. He, Max, and Winthrop filed out. 

Skip's group was not so kind. Skip had more of the team -- most of the team, really. They were Kentucky-derby formal as well, not the kind to openly jeer. But they stayed. They stayed and they stayed. They said his name with an edge when they asked for more rolls -- _D i i ck_ with a hard stop. They asked him too-friendly questions:

"When do you get off work, Dick?"

"You don't have to clean those, do you, Dick?"

"We don't have to tip you, do we, Dick?"

"Don't worry, Dick," Skip said, leaning back and surveying the team. "We will tip you."

He was burning and furious when he made it back to the kitchen. He walked into Blue. She had to scramble to save her tray of food.

"Watch it!" she said. "Just because your horrible friends hate you now--"

"I do not think," Gansey said, very clearly, very calmly, calm to rein himself in, "That they were ever really my friends."

Blue rolled her eyes. 

"Obviously," she said. 

But when he next went out to re-stock the buffet, he found her standing at their table, steely-eyed, collecting plates.

"Thank you so much," she was telling them. Her voice was distinctly Henrietta now, the way Adam's was when he was tired. She deepened the thank you, made it take on all manner of syllables. Some of them did not sound very thankful at all.

"We've never been told we had to relocate before," Skip was saying, very stiffly.

"It's our fault. Birthday party coming in. Supposed to be fifteen people," Blue told him. "I'm so sorry."

"This isn't a very well-run restaurant," Stuart complained.

"Of course not," Skip said coldly. "They'll hire anybody."

They did not leave a tip. They did, however, leave. Gansey cleared their table after they went, tried to catch Blue's arm to say thank you in the process. She waved him off, already handling another order, then rushing back to the kitchen to place a phone call, then rushing back out.

He did not get the chance to thank her for most of the night. Two curious things happened to prevent it. First, a birthday party did come in. Not quite fifteen people. Only seven or so. They were all young. They slouched on the heels of a very tall, strategically ample kind of young woman, attractive from her orange-painted toenails to her extremely glorious nose. Gansey couldn't help glancing at her as she walked in. She didn't wait to be seated. She went straight for the booth Skip and the others had vacated. 

Gansey hurried to get her water. That was his job. He seated people and brought out the water and explained the buffet (as a concept, as though people needed it explained. Donny thought people needed it explained). The he told them that their server would be with them soon. 

"Your server--"

"You owe me," the young woman told Blue, as Blue walked by with a tray for table 17. 

"I told you fifteen, Orla!"

Orla shrugged. "Even I can't find that many people on such short notice. You still owe me."

"He owes you!" Blue said, pointing at Gansey with an elbow. She hoisted up her tray and hurried away. 

"Your server will be with you soon?" Gansey tried. 

Orla regarded him. She and her people were a complex arrangement of flimsy tank tops and cargo pants, flip flops and herbal smells. None of them looked at the menus he had given them. Some of them pulled out what looked like tarot cards. 

"You should come for a reading," Orla said. She slid something to him across the table. Gansey took it. 300 Fox Way, psychic services by appointment. $30 for a complete reading. Whatever a complete reading was. Did this mean that they offered cheaper, less complete readings as well?

Regardless, Gansey said, "I don't think my funds extend quite that far right now." 

She looked him up and down. A searchlight look. Gansey very decidedly did not squirm, and if that was a near thing then no one had to know. 

"I could make it worth your while. Tell Donny it's my birthday."

"Sorry?" Gansey said. 

"My birthday," Orla said patiently. "If he asks, it's my birthday."

"Why are you talking to her?" Blue hissed, coming by again and dragging Gansey away by the arm. She had a suprisingly strong grip. Gansey peered down at her, dubious about it. She deposited him in the kitchen. 

"Focus on your work!" she snapped. 

"I needed to tell her her server would be with her shortly," Gansey explained. 

"She knows!" 

Blue seemed annoyed for some reason. More annoyed than usual. 

"Should I have done something differently because it's her birthday?" Gansey asked. 

"It's not really her birthday!"

Blue stomped out again. 

This was when the second curious thing happened. Gansey went to tell Laurence to prepare chicken wings for table 14, and found Noah sitting on a chair near the kitchen window. He blinked at him. It was like his brain needed a little more time to understand that Noah was there. 

"You can't be back here," Gansey told him firmly, pinning up the order. He guided him up gently by one arm when Noah would not move. Noah let himself be guided, a cold and complacent thing. He was staring, rapt, across the main floor of the restaurant. Gansey followed his gaze. 

"Ah. Yes," Gansey said. "That's Jane."

"Blue," Noah corrected. 

"You know her?" Gansey asked. 

He obviously didn't, because when Blue found Noah in the place where Gansey had temporarily stored him, the alcove by the public telephone and mop closet, she said, "You can't just give your friends special treatment!"

"Special treatment?" Gansey asked incredulously. "I couldn't get him to sit at a table--"

"I don't eat," Noah put in. 

"--so he's sitting near a pile of old mops."

"You can't bring your friends in, anyway," Blue said. 

This made no sense, given the way she had produced Orla. But Noah now took the opportunity to introduce himself, and somehow he was less wispy about this than usual. He was more solid, and Gansey blinked as his brain tried to account for how. 

Blue. Blue was the how. Within seconds it became clear that Noah liked her very much. Gansey couldn't understand it. Noah didn't seem like the type to turn on around a girl. 

Somehow, Blue seemed to understand this about him. Or maybe she was flattered. 

"He can stay, but I don't know about it," she told Gansey flatly. 

But she obviously did. Gansey caught her bringing Noah water, which Noah did not drink, and even a garlic roll, which Noah did not eat. Blue did, eventually, when she took a three minute break near him. Gansey passed them four times in those three minutes. Blue seemed to be complaining about raven boys. Noah seemed to be accepting and validating every last complaint. 

"You know we close soon," he told Noah, when he was caught out and Blue had begun to eye him aggressively for eavesdropping. For such a small person with such a silly wardrobe, she did aggressive incredibly well. 

"Are you closing? I can help you close," Noah said, stroking his smudged cheek absentmindedly and not taking his eyes off of Blue. 

"He'll need your help," Blue said. 

But she stayed later as well, though she'd already shown Gansey how to do it the night before. She chased Orla and her friends out, locked the door, and threw up the closed sign. Then she immediately began clearing tables. Gansey was glad for her help. Donny had vanished into his office, which meant that Noah could come out and help clear the buffet. But Noah's idea of clearing it involved taking the buffet offerings and mashing them together in interesting combinations. Gansey rescued a tray of wilted greens now doused in vanilla pudding, and politely requested that Noah please stop helping. Nodding, Noah floated across the room to Blue, who sent him back to the mops in case Donny appeared. 

"Noah certainly likes you," Gansey told her, after he'd contrived to arrive at the kitchen at the same time she did. 

Surprisingly, her only answer was a decided, "I like Noah."

Gansey had not been expecting that. He took a moment to gather himself. Not that he needed a moment. It was silly to need a moment. This was perfectly fine. Noah was a good friend, an odd comfort, a presence whenever Gansey was most down even if the rest of the time Gansey couldn't ever seem to find him. 

"He has a habit of vanishing," Gansey said. "But he's really very nice aside from that."

"Vanishing?" Blue asked, raising one spiky black brow. 

Horribly, Noah chose this time to appear far too close to the kitchen. 

"I do vanish," he told her adoringly. "I can't help it. I've been dead for seven years."

To her credit, Blue only rolled her eyes and hustled him back to the mop closet. But when Gansey came across them again (not to eavesdrop; only to get a mop), she seemed to have entered into Noah's strange game. 

"He'll die?" Noah said. "If you kiss him, or when you kiss him?"

"If," Blue said, looking pensive. "I think it's if."

"Wow," Noah said. "Killing your true love with a kiss. That's a big one."

"Are you going to kill someone with a kiss, Jane?" Gansey joked, wheeling the mops past. He wanted her to see that he actually had the mops and so he couldn't help but overhear this time. "That's unlucky. I suppose there's one man more unlucky than me out there."

It was a bad joke, but he hadn't expected her to go chalk-white over it. She did. Gansey stopped wheeling and stared at her, frantically tried to think of how he had gone wrong. He did not want to be boneheaded like this. He'd never had a job before. He had no sense of how to behave at one. 

"I have to go," Blue said shortly. "It's not my day to close up anyway." 

Then she was gone. 

"You shouldn't talk to your coworkers about kissing," Noah suggested. 

"Right," Gansey said, nettled, hating how unpleasant he seemed to be to her. "Right."

-

The one good thing about working at Nino's was that Adam looked at him differently. 

He didn't know he was doing it. There was no artifice to Adam, or at least none that wasn't connected to the bruises. For the most part he told Gansey outright when Gansey was being stupid about costs, when Gansey was not being fair. He'd been especially forthright about fixing the Camaro after Kavinsky ruined it. According to Adam, they could split the costs of fixing it and Adam would cover the repair, which would drive down the costs anyway, and that was the fairest, fastest way to fix it. 

It did not seem fair. Adam had plenty of work on his own. He spent some days perpetually grease-stained, distant, blue circles under his eyes. He could snap to attention for a lesson, but in his own way he was as not-quite-there as Noah. Beset by work. Gansey understood. He was tired as well, and he didn't work half as much as Adam did.

And perhaps this was why it did not seem fair to take Adam up on his offer. It was not like taking from Tad and the other loyal members of the crew team; it was taking from someone who needed every ounce of time to himself. 

Gansey had asked, once, why Adam worked so hard.

He'd gone very still. "So that I can pay for Aglionby. It's only a partial scholarship."

"It can't leave you much time for yourself," Gansey had said. 

More still than still. 

"Someday I'll have it."

In his voice there had been, briefly, something indescribable and heavy. It was not like Adam. It was not straightforward or calm or remotely careful. 

Gansey wanted to understand it, to find out why.

But once he began working at Nino's, Gansey had little time for that. He proposed one day that they meet up after work -- Gansey finished at Nino's by ten-thirty some nights. But Adam worked later than that, and was up at four-thirty most mornings to begin work again. And after work, school. And during school, staring down Skip and the others for Gansey in class. Looking over the Camaro as well as he could during break periods. Tending to Gansey's minor scrapes, cuts picked up when Gansey dropped a glass, or scraped himself on the sharp edges of the industrial dishwasher. 

Adam seemed quietly proud of Gansey for working. That quiet pride made Gansey go to bed in the backseat most nights turning over the idea of visiting the garage, visiting Adam where Adam might need help. He always rejected it. He did not feel equipped to help anyone and he would not give Adam extra work. He would certainly not give Adam extra work as a flimsy pretense for seeing him -- they hadn't even known each other that long, and it wasn't like Gansey could pay him anyway. Adam deserved to be paid. So the Camaro would have to stay defaced. At least until Gansey could afford to pay for its repair.

And then one night, miraculously, he could. 

He was tired, his clothing as mussed and filthy as it always was these days, so he drove the car a little ways off a backroad and sat resting against it, brushing his teeth and rinsing with a water bottle Noah had mysteriously procured for him while at Nino's. Maybe it was from Nino's. He was too exhausted to care. It was gloomy and dark and silent, and he wondered if he would fall asleep just like this, leaning against the car. He almost hoped so. It was better than laying up all night the way he'd begun to do. He didn't want to be an insomniac. It wouldn't help with anything.

The silence stretched, lulling him. Spitting and rinsing became rote. He wished he had floss. He ran his tongue along his teeth and wondered, for the first time in his life, what would happen if he needed dental care. He had no idea if he had health insurance. He would have to call Maitland and ask, probably.

Through the dark quiet, he heard a crack.

It was a footstep. Somehow he knew this. He stopped brushing, dipped the toothbrush in the water. Sat the water bottle on the ground next to the car. Wiped his mouth with the back of one hand, wincing at himself for it, dirty but alert. 

The footsteps came closer, and he shifted to the side, peered around the edge of the car. He could see nothing, but he knew someone was approaching from the other side. Soundlessly, Gansey moved into a crouching position. He kept one hand on the front of the car as he crept around it. There was a shadow, tall but distinct. It held a plastic bag and jiggled the handle of the car door experimentally, then produced something that glinted. A key. Gansey watched as they inserted the key into the door.

Treacherously, impossibly, the Camaro swung open for this person. They dropped the bag on the seat and turned to go. 

"Stop," Gansey said.

He was not sure why he said it. But they did stop, as commanded. Tense. Gansey took a step towards them.

Then they were away. Gansey ran after them. They were fast, running not towards the road as Gansey thought they might, but instead deeper into the woods, zig-zagging, every new route a transformation. Gansey kept pace, just as determined not to lose them as they were to be lost. It was a few minutes before he saw distant lights ahead. Another road, closer to the main highway. He redoubled his efforts to catch them, understanding that this had been their destination all along, that if they made it there he would never know who they were or what they wanted, whether they were a benefactor or someone having fun with him. Somehow all thought of what they had left in the Camaro fled his mind. He only wanted to know, wanted to understand who would find him and visit him and leave him something.

He caught up near the knoll leading up to the road, lunged and caught them from behind. For a moment they rolled uselessly together along the bank, his intruder's hands up above their face, something skillfull in the way they curled in and rolled. Entirely silent. They had a hood pulled low over their face, but the shape of them was solid and very male. Gansey pushed off when they both stopped rolling, stood, held a hand out to let the stranger up.

In response, he was punched in the face.

It was fast, a snake-movement, practiced. Gansey's first thought was, _oh_ , because he had never expected to be hit in all his life. He was unused to it. Violence was not something meant to touch him.

His second thought was, _well_ , because his nose was bleeding, but the rest of him was fine. His assailant had hit him just enough. Not a wild bar fight kind of hit, which was how Gansey assumed punches were meant to behave. Only a smooth, effective hit. Not a punch, only the intimate knowledge of how to handle an emergency.

When he looked up, the stranger was a blurred, fast shape in the lights from the road. Gansey stumbled up the knoll, but was too late. The slam of a car door, the sound of the engine, then -- 

Gone.

It took some time to make it back to the Camaro. Gansey did not know the woods as well as his visitor had, and he held his painful nose the whole time, still somewhat shocked to be hit. When he reached the car, he half-expected to find a bomb on the seat. A clod of dirt or worse. A sheaf of newspapers about his mother. Something awful.

But the bag held only a strange assortment, a jumble, puzzle pieces that it took some time for Gansey to arrange properly. A can of orange paint, the color unique and terrible familiar. Terry cloths. Polishing compound. Solvent. Sandpaper. Something called automative clear-coat, whatever that was. Two hundred dollars in twenty dollar bills, neatly bundled. A page ripped out of the school directory.

That was somehow the clearest clue. _One of these things is not like the others_. Gansey flipped it over. It was taken from the junior class day student listings: Pace, Packer, Pagett, Parrish.

Adam Parrish  
Glenn Lane Mobile Home Park  
4360 Glenn Lane  
Henrietta, VA 24150

It was for the car. These things were to fix the car. This money would pay for the labor involved. And this -- this was the person to fix it. Adam. 

But when Gansey thought of the car that had roared away down the main highway, that unmistakable black BMW, he wondered why Ronan Lynch had bothered to help him.


	3. Chapter 3

Glenn Lane was a dirt road. It took Gansey several tries to find it. He'd been looking for something a little more paved.

The grass here was dry and flat. Dead. The trailer houses were nearly identical, small and wide, yards piled with rusting aluminum and old tires. There were no flowers and few trees, but fat black insects attacked everything else in sight: the cheap chain link fences, the dog tied up at 4351. It howled and howled at the Camaro as it went past. 

Everything was dust. Dust on the houses, dust on the wrinkled, brown, narrow-eyed people sitting in plastic chairs in their yards. Some shouted at the car, but not very many. The Camaro had clearly seen better days, despite Adam's careful maintenance of it. Gansey didn't have the money to have it cleaned. It was as dusty as everything else here. 

Adam's house was painted light blue, his front yard ornamented by a skinny dying tree and a telephone pole. Gansey brought the Camaro to rest between the tree and the pole and stepped out, right into a stretch of dank black mud. He wiped his Top Siders on the dead grass as he walked to the front step. It bothered him to see them filthy, but the absence of beauty here bothered him more. He'd never before thought that people needed beauty. He'd never seen a profoundly ugly place before.

The woman who answered the door was Adam transposed by a few degrees. She had his long, fine look; his dusty hair; his wide-set eyes. Though he had his reservations about Adam's life here, Gansey still smiled at her, unbidden. Adam's mother. Adam could not have sprung from nowhere, of course not, but there was still some comfort in seeing where he _did_ come from. This reflection, worn and feral, but still somehow very much like Adam.

She did not smile back at Gansey.

"If you're not from the electric company, then you need to leave," she said. Her eyes were hard as she took him in: the muddy shoes, the faded khakis, the faint bruising around his nose. A polo that had once been blue and was now a dull grey. 

"I'm Adam's friend," Gansey explained. "He offered to help with my car a few days ago."

She looked at him, then looked away. She'd heard all she needed to hear. She said, "Out back," then closed the door in his face. 

Gansey worried his lip with his thumb as he walked around the house. He was a sorry sight right now. And maybe he was recognizable. Maybe she knew who he was. This was why she stared this looked cold. He didn't want this to just be the way she was, not if she was Adam's mother. He preferred it to be his fault. 

There was an old carport tucked against one edge of the house, everything beneath it shadowed, shaded grey instead of dusty brown. It was dark enough that Gansey hardly noticed Adam at first, sitting on some concrete blocks, his hands working steadily on something in his lap. It was too mechanical a something for Gansey to recognize at this distance. He stepped closer. A ragged mutt at Adam's feet lifted its head and growled, the sound loud and vicious in the silence.

Adam's eyes looked up fearfully but his hands went down to the dog, pulling it back, shoving it behind the concrete blocks, like he wanted to protect it. This stopped when he caught sight of Gansey. He put his mechanical thing down carefully and wiped his hands on a greasy rag, then stood. Gansey picked his way through the carport. It was full of things; somehow he hadn't expected there to be so many things, tools and magazines and a brand new cooler. He wanted to point it out to Adam: "I know these things all cost money. Isn't it funny that they're here, of all places?" 

But this was where Adam lived, and the tentative way he handled things, lifting them out of the way and setting them down exactly where he'd found them, suggested that none of this had been purchased for his benefit.

"What are you doing here?" he asked Gansey. 

His voice was different here, unfiltered Henrietta, not like it was at school. The dog danced and yipped delightedly around him and he rubbed its ugly ears until it calmed. 

"I have some things," Gansey began. "To fix the scratch on my car. Money, too."

"You don't need t--"

"I work," Gansey said. "I earn money now." It was misleading to put it this way and he knew it, but he wanted very badly to pay Adam. Adam would not be here if he could afford to leave. No one would be.

"You didn't need to buy anything," Adam told him. His voice was gentle but his eyes were wary. He was looking beyond Gansey's head, like he expected someone else to join them. He said, "I told you to bring it by Boyd's and I meant it. We've got everything you need there. What did you get, anyway?"

Gansey had no idea what half of the things in that bag were.

"Come look," he suggested. "You can tell me if I got it right."

Adam followed him out to the Camaro, but still looked warily about, a feral edge to him now. When the dog attacked the tires with unbounded joy, he pushed her down and shushed her again. Gansey gathered that she belonged to someone else and that she was named Daisy, though she looked like nothing so fresh or pleasant. She sat obediently at Adam's feet as Adam rifled through the contents of the bag.

"You even got the shade right," Adam said. "Exactly right."

He sounded surprised and briefly pleased. Gansey allowed himself to enjoy it for a moment, but his enjoyment felt terribly false. He had not bought these things. Ronan Lynch had, for some reason. And Gansey wanted to know why, wanted to tell Adam so that Adam could help him find out why.

Instead, he took out the roll of bills and passed it to Adam, folding it into Adam's hands.

"This is too much," Adam said flatly. "Part of the cost is for supplies anyway, and you already paid for those."

He held the money out to Gansey, motivated by pride, perhaps. Inflexible, instinctive in him. But Gansey didn't want the money. This wasn't like taking from Tad or the team. Adam was a different kind of creature entirely, and they both knew it. He would only be taking what Adam needed. He tried gently to push Adam's hand back. Adam shook his head. Gansey tried again, saying, "Listen, Parrish--" 

Adam jerked his hand out again, the action too sudden.

"I said take it, Gansey!" 

His voice was too loud in the dusty platter of Glenn Lane. The flies that buzzed around everywhere were momentarily frightened away. Gansey blinked, shocked, and Adam reddened. He stepped back from the car, his hand still holding out the money. Gansey stared at it. Neither of them processed the blue Toyota pick-up that pulled alongside the dirt road, the slam of a car door.

"Why are you giving that money away?" someone said.

A hand settled on Adam's hand, grabbing the roll of bills. Then the hand shifted to Adam's shoulder and shoved Adam back against the car. Gansey flinched. The dog yipped and was kicked for its troubles. Gansey himself lurched forward, unsure. The man who'd grasped Adam was a large and colorless thing. There was little of Adam in him, nothing in his hard mouth or his dark eyes. But Gansey knew who he was. 

" _I_ was paying _him_ ," Gansey said. He heard outrage in his tone. He didn't care. Gansey had been raised to deplore violence. A bloody nose had left him dumbfounded. But for one uncharacteristic he almost wished he was the kind to _want_ violence, closer to the Lynches and Kavinskys of the world. He stepped forward again.

Impossibly, Adam's hand held him back. Gansey stared down at it, at the long calloused fingers. It was steel around his wrist. 

The large man spat, counted the money out. He pocketed most and handed Adam the rest.

"Oil change?" he told Gansey disinterestedly. "Or something else?"

"Something else," Adam echoed.

"I asked him," the man said. He took two fingers and jabbed Adam's forehead back, hard. Gansey made a sound he'd never made before. He felt himself move, wanted only to _control_ this. Adam shoved him away.

Adam's father grinned. He looked Gansey over, top-to-bottom.

"Feel like I've seen you around but I don't know you."

"You wouldn't know me," Gansey said. He didn't look at him. He looked at Adam. Adam looked away.

Then Adam's father said, "Adam, tell McLaren to get that fucking mutt out of our yard," and turned to go inside. Now Gansey did look, followed his retreating back to the door. Something hideous and unfamiliar filled him. He wanted to guide Adam into the Camaro and take him away, but where would they go? And Adam was in no condition to go anywhere. Though his arm still held Gansey back, iron, something about him was unfocused. When Gansey called his name he seemed startled.

"He shouldn't be treating you like that," Gansey said.

Adam's answer came delayed, a few seconds late.

"Don't do this," he told Gansey, as though Gansey were the problem.

"Do what? Adam, he treats you horribly." 

The worst part was that Adam had not fought it, not even a little. Adam allowed it, and held Gansey off as though Gansey were the one in the wrong. Did he believe he deserved this? Was this what happened, when you came from a place like this? Was this what happened when you had little, so very little?

"Don't, Gansey," Adam said again. He passed his hand over his features, as though exhausted.

"Don't what?" Gansey hissed. He wanted to understand and yet he did not want to. Adam's treatment at his father's hands had always been clear, thanks to the bruises. But now it had a hard truth. That Adam could stand there and deny it openly after Gansey had _seen_ it seemed like the worst thing. Adam was meant to be better than this. Gansey would have him living in better conditions if he could. Honest conditions. More than this fear. 

"You should leave here," he told Adam urgently. He didn't know how it could be accomplished. But he wanted to try. He wondered if they could get an apartment together, if they could pool their resources. This was the first time he had seriously considered it. He couldn't afford anything on his own, and maybe Adam couldn't either. But together they would be stronger.

"Stop it," was all Adam said.

"Stop _what_?"

"Pity," Adam spat now, like it was a bad word. Gansey stared at him. There was still color in his dusty cheeks, but his hands were balled into fists that made his knuckles chalk-white. 

"Sympathy is pity?"

"Sympathy's easy, Gansey," he said. "Like--like looking at this all from the outside. Knowing you've never had to deal with it--"

"I'm terribly sorry that no one has ever beaten me purple or shoved me against a car," Gansey said. "It doesn't make it right for him to do it to you."

"Why did you even come here?" Adam hissed. Now he took the money his father had left and shoved it all in the bag again, shoved the bag inside the car. "Just go. I told you we'd do this at Boyd's. I didn't tell you to come here."

"Trust me, I wouldn't have come if I'd known you'd be defending your right to be treated like dirt," Gansey said.

Something was mounting in him. A horrible hopeless anger, suitable for this place. He turned on his heel and walked around to the drivers' side of the Camaro, opened the door.

"If I bring it by Boyd's, Boyd will take the money," he told Adam, because it was true. "It makes no difference if you try and give it back in this desultory way--"

" _Desultory_?" Adam managed, sounding disbelieving. It was like he couldn't understand, couldn't see how wrong all this was. The Adam of the trailer park was a defeated, confused thing. He was barely worthy of the Adam Gansey had come to know over the past few weeks. It made it impossible for Gansey to look at him. He started the car, hating himself for leaving like this. 

"If I asked you to come with me right now, would you?" he asked. A last-ditch effort.

Adam looked at him. In the dust, gaze unfocused, there was something horribly ferine to the fine lines of his face.

"Get in," Gansey said. Pleaded. 

Adam shook his head, lips thin and angry. 

"And go where?" he said. "You live in your _car_."

Then he turned and followed the path his father had made, back to the trailer.

-

Blue hadn't known Gansey for very long, and yet even she could tell that the Gansey who appeared at Nino's that evening was not the usual Gansey.

"Where's Noah?" she asked him by way of greeting, when she came in and found him already stacking dishes in the kitchen. The ancient industrial dishwasher seemed to be on the outs again. 

"How would I know?" he said back.

He did not say it rudely, but he did not say it with his usual presidential politeness either. Blue stared at him. He stared, eyes electric, at the dishes. His well-formed mouth was hard, his normally tidy hair brushed his forehead with unsettled abandon. There was a very faint bruise on his nose. He still looked like a hero, but it was a tragic hero, not a glossy one. The protagonist of some terrible epic. Buried up to his forearms in suds.

"I saw Noah last night," he said shortly, scrubbing with more wildness than Blue had ever seen out of him. It felt wrong on him. He could not be by nature wild; it didn't fit his glossiness. He added, "I'll probably see him tonight as well. He comes by now and then."

"He visits you at night?" Blue said, tying on her apron.

Gansey said something like, "Yes, and he's not much of a comfort," but this was such a deeply not-Gansey thing to say that she only stared at him. Then Cherry came in and stared at _her_ until she went to do her job, so she didn't have much of a chance to talk to him until an hour or so later. 

He was sitting in Noah's usual spot, clearly taking a break. His head was tilted back against one side of the grimy phone kiosk. His hands rubbed his eyes. Blue didn't think he knew she was there but then he said, indistinctly, "Jane."

He was behaving so oddly that Blue didn't see the point in chastising him for the nickname. She pulled up a battered chair and sat next to him, smoothing down her apron.

"They'll start to miss us in about two minutes," she told him as a warning.

He nodded once. He brought his hands down but continued to sit with his head tilted, staring at the ceiling, something about him dissatisfied. When he smiled, the smile had bite.

"What good am I, Jane, without my money?"

Blue stared at him. 

"I can't answer that for you!"

He nodded again. Now Blue could see the fan of his lashes, the hectic cast to his eyes. It was somehow frightening, not frightening because of what he might say to Blue, but frightening because of what he might admit about himself. Blue remembered now Orla's wild predictions.

_What if he kills himself?_

He was more reckless today. Abruptly worried for him, Blue took his hand. His fingers curled around hers, surprisingly warm.

" _Most_ people don't have money," she told him. "Or a lot of us don't, anyway."

There was still bite in his smile but now there was something else, too.

"You sound like a friend of mine," he said.

"And you sound like you think people have to be--be members of Congress or something to be anything or get anything done with their lives--"

Now he was shaking his head. "No, Jane. Congress hardly ever gets anything useful done, not that your average American notices."

She wasn't going to drop his hand, but it was a close thing.

"Excuse me?"

"Not at all. As a nation, I think we have the Congress we deserve."

Now she didn't drop it, but she did lift it up and smack it against his thigh. He brought his chin down and looked at her, surprised but not visibly upset by this.

"I don't think someone in your position should be slinging mud at the average American," she informed him. 

"Well, I don't mean you, Jane. You're not average at all."

Something murmured in her. She shoved it away, but it kept murmuring, as though ignorant of the predictions that she would kill this boy. And he _was_ a boy now, he felt more real now. Impossibly real. Hand warm in hers, hair wild and gloriously chestnut, heedless and horrible in his own ways, but in all ways now at her disposal.

This couldn't happen. She dropped his hand. He started, his wildness still written on him. For a moment Blue panicked, because she couldn't explain why she had dropped his hand without somehow lying to him, and she didn't want to do that. But then, like clockwork, Donny muttered his way into view.

"What are you two doing?" he snapped. "Cherry's swamped out there!"

Nodding, Blue gave Gansey what she hoped was an apologetic look. It was. She knew it was. He just didn't know what the apology was for. She followed Donny out to the main floor of the restaurant as Donny muttered himself away.

But now there was something uneasy in her as she worked. Blue had always wanted this kind of thing. Not--not this romantic. Not in any way to do with true love. But this sense of possibility, this sense of potential. The thought of things starting, of hopes that could be.

She found herself circling back to his place at the huge metal sink, catching glimpses of his broad back. Now he didn't call out for her; he was consumed with suds again. Then it was time for her to leave, and he was still elbows deep in murky water. She hesitated as she took off her apron. She felt like she should say something. 

"Have a good night, Jane," Gansey said instead. His voice had no bite anymore. It was official, firm. Not just a wish that she would have a good night, but an instruction to the universe to make it so.

Remarkably, at first she did have a good night. Orla wasn't too overbearing, and Calla and Jimi made some kind of potato dish with rum in it for dinner that meant no one really blamed Blue or chastised her for choosing yogurt instead. Persephone hovered anxiously at her side all night, but informed Blue that it was not to protect Blue that she did it. It was just to make sure that Blue didn't set any traps.

"Traps?" Blue said.

"Am I ahead again?" Persephone asked, twisting one lock of pale hair around her index finger and frowning.

" _I_ don't know," Blue said.

"Ahead or behind but definitely not with us," Maura muttered, passing them on the stair. Maura was the one dark spot to the evening so far. A black mood enveloped her. Neeve was still not home, so Maura buried the household in indistinct complaints about how Neeve had not only left them with all her junk and left without politely saying she would leave, but that before she'd done it she had been rifling through Maura's things, which was really the problem.

"Your things aren't that nice anyway," Blue heard Calla say when Maura reached her. They were both downstairs in the kitchen. Blue turned to go to her room.

"Not exactly mine," she heard Maura say in response. "You know."

Then Maura said something that, impossibly, sounded just like: "Butternuts."

Blue blinked. Persephone lightly tapped her sleeve.

"You should go outside," Persephone advised her. 

"Are you going to follow me to check for traps?"

"Oh, no, in this case it's too late for that," Persephone said cryptically. 

She made a thin humming sound as she floated down to the kitchen to discuss nut buttering, or buttering nuts, or whatever had so consumed Blue's mother.

Blue stared after her but went outside. Direct instructions were few and far between at 300 Fox Way. The women here did not need to be direct when they could be vaguely cryptic. And Blue sometimes chafed at the cryptic vagueness so much that she felt it only made sense to appreciate the rare instances where someone wasn't being oblique at her.

Outside, Noah was waiting under the beech.

In the dark, he was striped with green-black shadows. At first Blue had the odd sensation that she was imagining him and he was only the idea of Noah, but as she came closer he seemed to come into himself more. She wanted to ask him what he was doing here, but instead what came out was, "How are you?"

"Fine," he said. "Bad. Whatever you want."

Blue sat next to him. It was so odd to think that Noah was Gansey's friend, that he knew where Gansey went after Nino's, that he and Gansey walked the same halls, went to the same school. It was odd to think of Noah doing anything normal. He didn't quite fit into any place Blue tried to imagine for him.

"Do you like your school?" she asked him, sitting down next to him. She took his cold hand in hers. He looked delighted at this.

"I don't go to any classes," he informed her.

Blue rolled her eyes, but not at him.

"Tell me about it," she said. 

Blue was not academically inclined, herself. School was intrinsically tied to the future, or to her comparative lack thereof, to the places she could never go and the colleges she could never afford. School floated dead around the edges of her mind, a stressor she'd rather not deal with. 

"If you stay here in Henrietta after school, then we can stay here together," Noah offered. "Me and you."

Blue squeezed his hand. It was still cold.

"You'll have someplace to go," she told him. She couldn't imagine any Aglionby boy not eventually leaving. They were a jetset set. They were roaring BMWs and summers spent in Europe.

"Oh, I hope I don't have anywhere to go," Noah said, with a nervous laugh that made him all hollows and smudges. "I don't know. I don't know if I could go anywhere good."

A bad college for an Aglionby boy was probably far too good a college for someone in Blue's position. But Blue didn't say this. Something in Noah brightened so much, so visibly when he saw her that she did not want to knock him down. 

"There are probably people you can talk to," she said instead. "I'm sure you have options."

Noah shook his head.

"No," he told her. "I had one option -- one. But I blew it."

He brought his other hand to his mouth and splayed the fingers like an eruption, made a boyish exploding sound. Blue looked at him curiously.

"Aren't you in Gansey's class?" she said. "You have another year, right?"

"I don't have any years," Noah said now, looking agitated. "I don't have any, and I could have said to give my years to -- to him. I could have said to give him mine when he died --"

" _Died_?" Blue said, aghast.

"He didn't," Noah said. "Because I didn't make it happen."

His eyes were wide and so hollowed out now that for a moment they didn't seem like eyes at all. They seemed like something eaten, some raw hunger that had scooped out his face. Blue shoved herself back without meaning to -- it was just a trick of the darkness -- and she said, sharply, pulling herself in, "Stop it, Noah!"

She didn't know if he was having fun with her or not. He seemed to be, but she hadn't thought he was that kind of Aglionby boy. Something about Noah had seemed different. Though she barely knew him at all, Blue felt bitter and betrayed.

He drew back now.

"Sorry," he said faintly. "Sorry."

Then, sadly, "I never used my voice right when I could get people to listen to me,"

He scrambled up and backed away. Blue called after him, wondered if he had been serious after all. But by the time she was on her feet and following him around the beech tree he had vanished completely. 

Nettled and uneasy, she went back inside. She could still hear her mother, Calla, and Persephone discussing things in low voices in the kitchen. The entire house seemed colder, but then Blue herself felt cold. 

More tired, like something in her had dimmed, some energy had been sucked away too fast. 

-

Adam was not at school for the next three days, and so school became unbearable.

Gansey had members of the crew team in every class, had specifically made sure that his classes worked that way. Now he did not want to have them there. It was not intimidation he felt, but cold and hard betrayal. He had picked these people, once. He had wanted them. Now he wanted Adam, who was ten times more real. Or should have been. 

Adam seemed to be hiding away. Gansey would not go back and beg him to return, so he set his mind to Ronan Lynch instead.

He still did not know why Lynch had given him anything. He still did not know why Lynch had sent him to Adam. Since Latin had been canceled for the time being, he now had only one class with Lynch, last period, and though he was far more tired these days and it was harder to keep himself alert by that time, he made sure he was alert enough to watch Lynch.

Lynch in class was wasted ammunition. 

Gansey had the sense that he was in fact very clever. Or at least more intelligent than Kavinsky, not that that was hard. It was in the odd note scribbled on the side of Lynch's notepad, in the way Lynch sarcastically mouthed answers before others volunteered them. But Lynch did not seem interested in sharing any of his insights with the class. Gansey caught him looking at Adam's empty seat more than once instead of looking at the board or paying attention to the teacher.

Then Lynch caught him catching him, and he didn't look at Adam's space again.

"It's fascinating, in a way," Gansey told Noah during lunch the first day Adam was out. 

"It's really not," Noah said.

But it was, because it made Gansey wonder, with a painful twinge, if there was some history there he was not privy to. If Adam had known Lynch, once, if Lynch had once been clever enough to befriend Adam. Back when Gansey had been wasting his time with people like Skip Whittaker. 

He tried to follow Lynch after class that first day, but Lynch darted through a hedge near the library, cut up the steps to the science building, took a turn at the anaconda in its tank and vanished into a wall somehow.

"He's as bad as you are," Gansey said. "Or as good, when it comes to not being found."

"He just has something that lets him go invisible," Noah said, like this made sense. "I really can't be found."

"I don't think that's something you should be proud of," Gansey told him.

The second day things went no better. Lynch was still walking opposition. To what? To everything. He played cat's cradle with his gum during Skip's presentation. He made a dangerous noose of his tie when the graded essays were handed out. He stretched dramatically through an answer Tad was trying for and failing at. 

His school sweater rode up then. Violent red scratches marred the muscles on his stomach. Gansey blinked at this.

"What does he get up to?" he asked Noah, after class. Of course he knew perfectly well what most of it was. Kavinsky's gang was sex and drugs and cars, everything tawdry, New Jersey-cheap, new money slathered on top like an afterthought.

"You don't know people like you think you do," Noah told Gansey.

This was doubtlessly true, but Gansey hadn't failed in _every_ respect. Tad came up to them then. Tad always made sure to check in, to approach him where others could see, to sit near him when they shared classes. Even though Gansey would not seek him out. He would not drag Tad down that way. 

"You alright, Captain?" Tad asked him, tense. They were at the tables just outside the dining hall, and Gansey knew they were being watched through the great glass doors.

Gansey shook his head, which was only the truth. then he lifted a hand and touched Tad's shoulder lightly. 

"Go," he told him. It wouldn't help them at all if they found some way to kick Tad off of the team for fraternizing with him.

Tad went, but seemed to struggle with it. Halfway down the hall he turned and said, "Dick, Win's got room in his place if you need somewhere to stay. I could talk to him. He still--"

Gansey shook his head again. Winthrop had more than room. Winthrop had his own place in the subdivision. Max did as well. Only Tad roomed at the school, only Tad could not make space for him. And yet if the other two had wanted to, wouldn't they have done it themselves? He could feel their loyalty slipping. Or perhaps not slipping, but merely loyalty measured out in halves, in meager dollops. They seemed to do things that way.

How could they operate like this and not feel like husks? It left Gansey feeling cold with them. Not furious -- after the trailer park, he hoped fury would not touch him again, told himself it couldn't. But cold. If Winthrop was not brave enough to invite Gansey himself, then Gansey did not want to be invited. 

So he didn't pursue the invitation. He let Tad walk away. He found Ronan Lynch by the freshman green today, with one of his brothers. When Gansey approached something cawed at him raucously enough to make him turn away, some black bird high in a tree. When Gansey looked back again, Lynch was gone. Matthew Lynch was smiling pleasantly at him from the grass.

On the third day, Gansey lingered by the math classrooms to catch him again. Again Lynch vanished. Gansey was left staring at the walls and empty space. He stood, trying to puzzle it out, for a few moments.

"Found him?" Noah asked from behind him.

Gansey turned. There was a shift in the air, nearly imperceptible, and Gansey was momentarily stunned by it because they were inside. They were inside and in a corner of the mathematics center where there were no exits, no doors. Somehow no Lynch.

"I think I haven't," he admitted to Noah.

He gave it up for the time being. He would have to be at work in an hour, and he'd parked the Camaro far out by faculty housing, one one of the shady, wooded paths few students traversed. Now that it was both home and car, he wanted to be careful with it. He felt as though he'd let it down. Ignored it when he could have cared for it properly, and now that it was caring for him, there was nothing he could do for it.

"I wish I could care for things better," he confessed to Noah, as they walked to the Camaro. Something about Noah made confessions easy.

"Why?" Noah said, kicking at small rocks on the path.

Adam. 

Not simply the Camaro, but Adam too. Adam's life danced beyond Gansey's control. Now he laid up nights and thought about what could have been, if he'd bothered to know Adam before losing his money. He could have helped. He could have given Adam a way out. 

Because what had all that money been for, back when he'd had it? What good had he been to anyone? 

This was the mood he called Maitland in, with Noah still kicking rocks at his side. No news. No improvements. Maitland was trying, but there was nothing to report. Gansey was not surprised. He realized that it would not have felt right, to have some of his life restored. He wouldn't have deserved it. 

He hung up the phone just before he reached the Camaro.

Adam was there, kneeling on a sheet of plastic in the dirt. Working on the car, hands busy with sandpaper and paint, gaze carefully level with the car door. He was wearing a pair of old blue coveralls, as though he'd come from work or was heading to it soon. 

He had a horrible, purple-red bruise below one eye, stretched over his cheekbone. It made the faint traces left of Gansey's encounter with Ronan Lynch seem negligible, not worth complaining over. 

"I suppose Pinter would have asked too many questions," Gansey said. Pinter was still aggressively checking in with Gansey. Gansey didn't know why. Adam needed more attention than Gansey did. 

Adam didn't answer. He finished his work on the door and gave it one final once-over, though from where Gansey was standing it looked level and unmarred and perfect. Then he stood and stepped aside, wiping his paint-smeared hands on his coveralls.

"You bring it by Boyd's and I'll finish with the clear-coat. You shouldn't wax it for a few days," he told Gansey, avoiding Gansey's eyes. Gansey gave up trying to meet his gaze and chased the freckles on the bridge of his nose instead. They all seemed to lead back to that bruise.

"Can I afford to wax it? How much does that cost?" Gansey said. He stepped forward and got into the car. Somewhere along the way Noah had vanished again. Now it was just him and Adam.

Adam picked up his plastic sheeting and his tools, folding them all carefully into a shopping bag. Gansey watched him. His movements were stilted, as though he ached in places Gansey couldn't see. 

So much for Gansey being above fury. How un-Ganseylike Adam made him.

Adam shifted, clutched his shopping bag. 

"Can I come in?" he asked, gesturing at the Camaro.

Gansey nodded. Adam went around to the passenger side and climbed in, folding his long body into Gansey's space, around the school books and the clean laundry. He was as careful with it as he had been with the things in the carport. Gansey felt doused with cold water. 

"I didn't buy those things to fix the car," he told Adam, because Adam evidently thought he had. Adam had gone out and procured his own supplies. That told Gansey what Adam thought of his help.

"Ronan Lynch bought them, and gave me that money," Gansey continued.

He watched Adam's fine features in the mirror to see if Adam had an explanation. Adam didn't seem to. He looked as shocked by it as Gansey did.

"Do you know him?" Adam asked.

"Do you?"

"No. I hate that guy," Adam said, shaking his head. He was so prompt and frank about it that Gansey believed him. Adam dug deeper into his shopping bag now and pulled out some folded yellow fabric, placed it carefully between their seats.

"I could teach you how to fix the car yourself," he proposed. Henrietta was gone from his voice. His tone was careful, too-even. "I talked to Boyd. We have a guy who left a few months back. Haven't found anybody to replace him. Boyd was looking for someone with experience, but I told him I didn't mind teaching you."

Stunned, Gansey unfolded the yellow fabric. It was a cheery pair of coveralls. They looked about his size, but the name sewn on them was _Jerry_.

"The last guy left them. You can switch that out," Adam said. "Boyd would dock your pay to order new coveralls, so I figured you could just get some thread and a new name tag and change it yourself."

This was far outside the realm of anything Gansey knew how to do and it must have shown on his face, because Adam said, quickly, "I'll show you."

"You can sew?"

Adam shrugged. Of course he could. He could fix hurt hands, he could fix cars. He was practical, skilled. Again Gansey hurt with how little he could do for him. 

"And Boyd doesn't mind hiring me?" he asked, when he found his voice.

Adam reddened.

"He doesn't know," he admitted. "I told him your name was Dick Campbell. He doesn't need your real name. He pays lots of guys under the table."

"You?" Gansey prompted.

"Back when I didn't have working permits," Adam said, shrugging again. "When he needs me to do things that, you know, I'd need to be older for." He sounded defiant in this. Gansey had the sense that if he tried to point out that child labor laws existed for a reason, they would only fight again. 

Adam was hardly a child, anyway. He wondered if Adam ever had been. Maybe Adam had always been something battered and worthy and in need of more attention that he got, like the Camaro.

"Thank you," Gansey told him. Then, because it was true, "This will help."

It would. Nino's was not enough. He was still scraping, especially since most of his money had to be put aside to answer the demands of the crew team, not just the new ergometers but whatever else Skip came up with. There would be something else, Gansey knew. 

He wished he had known Adam before. He wished he'd been that kind of person.

"If I could help you," he told Adam now, softly. "I would."

Adam looked away.

"You can't, Gansey," he said. 

His voice was flat, and terribly final. Something in Gansey refused to accept this.

-

He did not have many avenues. He did have an extra fifty dollars, thanks to Ronan Lynch. And he had a card from the mysterious Orla. And it was stupid, and reckless, the silly thinking of a creature with much more money, but one night he put the two things together.

He would still have twenty dollars left. And he wanted to see Orla. Not for Orla's sake, though she was glorious from the tips of her toes to the tip of her nose. He wanted to see her because Orla probably knew where he could find Blue outside of working hours.

He hoped Blue did not hate him. Sometimes it seemed as though she did. He told himself he wouldn't hold it against her if she did. But still, it seemed worth it to court Orla's favor in case Blue didn't. He spent one sleepless night twisting notepaper into a bundle of flowers to try and and make his case more appealing. Maybe Orla would think he was odd for asking, but he wanted to know one thing. Just one. Why Blue was so bothered by him that she could not help but excuse herself at every opportunity. 

And the paper flowers were something to do, now that he was finding it harder to sleep. Stress, Pinter said. Maybe it was. He didn't feel stressed except at odd moments, when it reared up in him and stopped him short, like an attack. Thankfully, those mostly happened away from people. And now when they did happen, he built things out of paper, small buildings, tiny streets he laid out on the backseat of the car. It made things cramped, but also more controlled. The world in miniature. He had to demolish several storefronts to make the flowers, but he hoped it would be worth it.

It was worth it. Orla did not answer the door at 300 Fox Way. Blue did. As soon as Blue did, he realized who the flowers were really for. 

"Here," he said, holding them out to her.

She looked stunned. She took them in hand and with her other hand fingered the many necklaces she was wearing today. Some were fine, delicate chains; others were paper clips; others were rough brown cord with shells hung on them. He wondered if she'd made them all. One had spiky stones threaded through and made him think that she was wearing many small hedgehogs. For one charmed and befuddled moment, something in him felt better.

"What are you doing here?" she asked.

He dug around in the pockets of his khakis and produced the card Orla had given him.

"I'd like a complete reading. For a friend. Do you live here?"

"Yes," she said. "I thought Noah would tell you." She moved aside to let him in. The small entryway was piled with galoshes, slippers, broken umbrellas, whole umbrellas, photographs of minor celebrities, beaded curtains, feathery purple shawls. It was loud and small and fit her so well that Gansey wanted to admire every piece of it.

"Why Noah?" he said instead. There was a story there. Maybe she had let him come in because she liked Noah.

"Because I thought he would," was all she said. "A friend? Is he the friend?"

"I have friends other than Noah," he told her. One. Adam. And, well, "Aren't you my friend?"

There was the briefest pause before she bulldozed the pause with her answer.

"Yes."

He was so grateful that he didn't notice the shadow looming just beyond the edge of his glasses. It coalesced into the palest, blondest woman he had ever seen, and then he blinked and behind her there were two more women.

"Dick Gansey the Third," said one. She was black and built along firm lines. 

"He's here for a complete reading," Blue said quickly, like she was worried they might think he was here for her. The last woman, Gansey thought, had to be her mother. She looked too much like Blue not to be. Blue reflected, Blue crowned with extra years.

"Is this your mother? Is she the psychic?" he asked Blue interestedly. "Hello."

"You're good, Encyclopedia Brown," said the woman who was obviously Blue's mother. "Maura. Psychic."

"We're all psychics," said the blonde one in a small voice. 

"Witches," said the dark one.

"Women who consort," corrected Maura.

What they consorted with, they didn't say, but they led Gansey into an overstuffed room off to one side, a room with too many lamps, where the furniture was slightly too big for the space. They were indeed psychics. They regarded him. He regarded them back with some interest -- he'd never met psychics before. They did not seem inclined to introduce themselves like normal people, but he gathered that the other two were Calla and Persephone from the casual way they addressed each other and arranged themselves around the table.

Gansey they directed to a lonely chair near the end of the room. Blue hovered near the door, watching this. Gansey noticed that she held the paper flowers delicately, as though she cared about not destroying them.

"Are you psychic as well?" he asked her. _Witch_. What a fantastic term. If it were not rude, he'd say it was appropriate. Something about Blue felt terribly bright and fantastic, the same way Adam felt careful and true. 

"She's not, but she helps," her mother said flatly, before Blue could respond. Not that Blue seemed interested in responding. She hadn't opened her mouth at all, though she'd stared at him ever since he'd arrived.

This made it very hard to feel proud about finding her. He could only be proud if she had wanted him to find her, and if she had wanted it she gave no indication of it. He thrummed with anxiety and hoped they would start the reading soon, whatever a complete reading actually was.

"What are those, are those sad apology flowers?" said the one named Calla, as Blue moved to sit between her and Maura.

"Do I have to apologize for something?" Gansey asked.

"You tell us," Maura said.

"Well, I'm asking her," he said, pointing at Blue.

Blue flushed and dropped the flowers in her lap. "No! You don't. Can we do the reading? You said it was for a friend."

"A _friend_ ," said Maura, raising an eyebrow.

"A _friend_ ," said Persephone, with small-voiced significance. 

Calla held out a hand and casually, too casually, tapped his wrist with a finger. 

"He really means a friend," she said.

"Great. Fifty dollars," Maura said, just as Persephone said, "Well, then we can't do it."

"I thought it was thirty--" Gansey began, but then he broke off at stared at Persephone.

"You can't do it?"

"For fifty we could try," Maura put in shamelessly, "but there's no telling. We can tell you about you and the friend, maybe. But the friend would have to be here himself for us to tell you anything just about him. Her?"

"Him," said Calla, though how she could tell, Gansey had no idea.

"Noah," Blue offered now. She seemed to keep circling back to Noah, as though she were concerned about him. 

"No," he told her. "Not Noah. His name is Adam, actually."

"Unless Adam is here I'm afraid we're no use," Persephone said. She looked at Maura and Calla now. Maura shrugged. Then, as though they'd practiced this and timed it perfectly, they stood.

"Blue can show you out when she wants to," Maura told him. This should have seemed imperious, Gansey thought, but she didn't say it imperiously. She said it with a fond look at her daughter, and Blue fondly rolled her eyes in response. They thought as one. A unit. Gansey refused to think of his mother's finger rubbing between his eyes.

When they'd gone, Blue did not show him out. 

"Are you worried about Noah?" he asked her abruptly.

"Should I be?" she said. Then, almost accusingly, "You know him better than me."

He really didn't. He did not even know where Noah lived. He said as much.

"He doesn't live at Aglionby with you?" Blue asked.

"I live in my car, Jane," he said wryly, smoothing one particularly unsightly wrinkle in his khakis.

"You live in your _car_?"

Naturally she didn't know. Gansey supposed most people wouldn't know, and he was glad for it. He didn't want to burden people with it. 

"Do you want a tour?" he joked.

"It is a very unusual car," she said. Her voice was off by a few degrees. He wondered how he could fix this.

He found himself leading her outside. The Camaro, dirty and beloved, all he had, waited for him patiently at the curb. He opened the trunk first. 

"Dirty laundry," he explained.

"Smart to keep it in the trunk," she told him. "Doesn't smell up the car that way."

"Just my thinking," he told her smoothly. He walked her to the back seats and opened the door there. 

"Pillow," he told her. "Toiletry bag. Spare shoes. Coat--"

"Tiny paper buildings?" she said.

He scooped them up to show her. So far he'd made several Aglionby buildings, and half of the street where Nino's was. Sometimes when he couldn't sleep he drove to that block and admired the neon gloom of the lights here. The bar, the evangelical church with its flashing sign, the gas station. He'd discovered that Henrietta on a clear night made for soft shadows and stars. And Henrietta after rain cast a mist over everything, made every light left on glow ghostly and beautiful.

"You like this town?" she asked incredulously.

"It's not such a bad place to be," he said. He didn't know what he would have done if he'd ended up in D.C. He thought things might be worse. Reminders of his mother and father, of Helen, everywhere. At least here things were open, new, untouched by the Gansey name.

In the front seat, Blue discovered the coveralls.

"Jerry?" she said.

"Adam got me another job at a mechanic's," he explained. "Also, I'm thinking of changing my name."

"Smart," she said. "But you look like more of an Oswaldo to me."

"I get that a lot," he told her.

She folded the coveralls again and left them on the seat.

"Do you want dinner?" she asked him. This was so unexpected, such a rare stroke of good luck, that he had to take off his glasses and wipe them, as though he weren't seeing things right. He felt as though he weren't. She must like him, if she was offering this. He must not be completely repulsive to her.

"I'd like that," he told her.

"Good," she said. "It's a weekend and Jimi's out late, so you can have what you find in the fridge. That's what we all do on the weekends. I'm having yogurt."

There, on the curb, yogurt seemed fine. Yogurt with a friend was better than eating alone in the dining hall. He followed her inside. 

-

Gansey would be at Boyd's on Sundays when Nino's was closed, and also on any mornings he did not have crew. So Adam adjusted his schedule carefully to account for this, traded factory shifts for garage shifts where he could. It did not feel right to leave Gansey alone at Boyd's, at least not at first. Gansey held a wrench like he expected someone to come along and relieve him of it. Maybe someone with a caterer's jacket and a little tray.

After Adam had fixed a new name patch for him, Gansey tried on the coveralls. He looked both magnificent and expectant in them. He didn't wear them like a mechanic. He wore them like Gansey, which was to say that he gave the impression of just having made the first moon landing for the sake of mankind, or being on the verge of discovering a cure for something that mostly plagued small children and other innocents.

Maybe it was the glasses. The glasses still threw Adam, but by now they had become unmistakably Gansey, which meant that now glasses seemed refined, somehow. Gansey kept insisting that he needed them to see. Adam wasn't sure that he wasn't trying to raise the profile of glasses. Henry Cheng had begun to wear glasses to class, and so had Tad Carruthers. Gansey insisted that he was no one now, but Adam wasn't sure. He still walked into rooms and produced an effect like the ceiling caving in.

"I like the color, and I hope Boyd finds me plain and serviceable in them," Gansey commented, as he drove them to Boyd's.

"That's just what you are in them," Adam said. "Just like me. Plain as prairie dust."

Gansey shot him an incredulous look. Adam supposed even Gansey must know the kind of impact Gansey had.

He was a little worried about introducing Gansey to Boyd. As far as he knew, Gansey had never met a creature like Boyd, and Boyd had never met a creature like Gansey. Boyd and Gansey were each two separate slices of Adam's life, and when Adam tried to bring them together in his mind, they would not fit. He worried that Gansey would step into the garage and make it all feel cement-cheap, worn and hideous. It _was_ that way, Adam knew. Every corner of Adam's life except for Aglionby was like that. But ever since that day at the trailer park, Gansey had done him the favor of staying out of the corners.

"This Dick?" Boyd said, when they walked up to greet him at the start of their shift.

Gansey shot a sidelong look at Adam. It was a decided, firm _please tell me how to handle this_ look.

"Yes, sir," Adam said.

"Dick, sir," Gansey said. He said _sir_ in a way that made Boyd seem small and lucky to be addressed in this manner. He held out a hand. Boyd shook it. He looked impressed with the kind of handshake Gansey could give. Apparently a handshake from Gansey was a regal, unforgettable kind of experience.

"Adam tell you the terms?" Boyd said now.

"Yes, sir."

"Says you've got a wild car."

"Yes, sir."

"You fix it yourself?"

"Yes, sir?" 

This last one was a question, because Gansey had never been able to fix the Camaro, as far as Adam knew, but Adam had figured Boyd didn't need to know that. He might have bent the truth a little for Boyd. Gansey looked at him now, uneasy beneath his facade of firm politeness. Adam nodded imperceptibly.

"Yes, sir. I fix it myself, sir. I hope to learn to do it better, sir."

"Good man," Boyd said.

"Yes, sir."

Adam elbowed him as Boyd stared at him. That last one hadn't needed a yes, sir. Gansey turned an appealing look at Adam, now no longer a handsome astronaut, now a very handsome alien attempting to learn the ways of the locals.

"Why don't we get him started replacing the brake pads on that Prius?" Adam said. Boyd nodded. Relieved, Adam pointed Gansey in the right direction. He'd gone over brake pads with Gansey the day before. Brake pads were easy. Gansey could do it, no problem. It only took a jack, a tire iron, a c-clamp, a torque wrench and rackets. 

Adam still felt a little like he was sending a small duckling out into a tornado. He put that thought away, because it was ludicrous, this was Gansey, surely Gansey was so used to success most of the time that he had to succeed now. He wouldn't bungle replacing some brake pads. Adam had been replacing brake pads when he was twelve.

But, just in case, Adam looked at Boyd and tried to find the right words. He did not want to expose Gansey -- not when Gansey's mother was still all over the news. But he worried that Gansey would expose himself. He felt like he had to warn Boyd about the magnificent vocabulary, the occasional helplessness around power tools. The way Gansey would take command nonetheless. The _Ganseyness_.

"Listen," Adam said. "About Dick. He might seem weird."

"Weird how?" Boyd said, raising an eyebrow. "Normal weird, or serial killer weird, or raised in a cult weird?"

Well, where Gansey was from, everyone _did_ wear the same kinds of clothes, polos and seersucker suits, bow ties and monogrammed belts. Everyone did the same kinds of things, too -- regattas and tennis matches and charity dinners. The world Gansey came from felt insular and cultish, if you looked at it from the outside. 

Bitterly, Adam was reminded that he would always look at it from the outside.

"You probably can't tell him it's like a cult," Adam muttered. 

Boyd stared at him. Adam realized too late what he was implying.

"No--"

But Boyd had already stopped paying attention to Adam. He now stared at where Gansey was jacking up the Prius with singleminded concentration.

"Broad boy like him?" Boyd was saying. "Raised in a-- hang on. Mennonite. Old German Baptist kind, out of that congregation near Harrisville? Good harvests. That's it, isn't it? So he probably won't know all the tools of the trade."

"Well, no, he won't, but--"

"Probably hardworking, though," Boyd said, stroking his chin. "And he looks dependable. They usually are. That's the German."

Adam made a split-second decision. He nodded. It was not a lie. Technically he hadn't said any lies.

"He might say odd things," he told Boyd. Not a lie.

"Biblical," Boyd said, nodding. "Strange turns of phrase."

"Anything strange he says, it's just his upbringing talking." 

Still not a lie.

"I've met a few who ran away from that congregation," said Boyd. He looked thoughtful. "Poor kid."

"He is very poor now," Adam managed. "Doesn't have a soul in the world."

What else was he supposed to say? That he'd asked Boyd to employ the son of a national disgrace? The former prince of Aglionby? Not only would Gansey lose the job -- Adam probably would, too.

And now, to keep Boyd from questioning it further, Adam volunteered himself for the hardest job they had in the shop, fixing a cracked exhaust manifold on a Jeep Cherokee. Adam had discovered yesterday that the new manifold didn't fit snugly enough, so part of it would have to be shaved off, and if the day was kind he was looking at maybe eight hours of painstaking work. It was painstaking work Gansey wouldn't have to do, though. Gansey could take the easier jobs, replacing exterior coolant leaks, that kind of thing. All the simple things Adam had already outlined for him. 

As he went to get his tools, he noticed that Gansey wasn't wearing gloves or safety goggle over his glasses. He stopped by Gansey when Boyd wasn't looking, tapped him hurriedly, and mimed putting them on. Gansey went to get them right away.

"Sorry," he told Adam, and he genuinely sounded sorry. It didn't work, somehow. Adam wondered if he himself was the alien, the person on a strange new planet. Apologies weren't supposed to come from the mouths of kings. 

"Don't be sorry," he told Gansey, after a minute, because he had to tell Gansey something. "You're doing great. Remember, if the friction material is one eighth of an inch thick or less, those pads are worn out."

"An eighth of an inch," Gansey echoed. His wonderful voice held a note of panic. 

"You're doing great," Adam said again. He felt a little profane, someone like him thinking he could reassure someone like Gansey. But, strangely enough, it worked. Gansey took a breath and relaxed and went back to the brake pads of his own volition. Proud of him, Adam went to work on the Jeep.

It was back-breaking and time-consuming, as he'd expected, but there were opportunities to stop here and there. He used them to get water and bring Gansey water, too, checking over his work and pointing out the flaws before Boyd could stop them. Boyd only caught one problem, once, when Gansey didn't put in the retaining clips that came with the new brakes.

"He's using the old clips," Boyd complained.

"It's hard to get used to these things when you never had to even think about fixing a car before," Adam said quickly. 

Not a lie. Technically not a lie. 

"Well, show him how it's done, then," Boyd said. "This has to feel like Christmas for him after horses and buggies, huh?" 

He let Gansey alone after that. The morning came and went, and they had lunch together out by the curb. Gansey had brought food from the Aglionby dining hall, smuggled out from breakfast, and Adam had two cokes he'd bummed from the trailer factory cafeteria the day before. 

"A toast," Gansey said, putting down his bagel and holding out his soda can.

"To your new job?" Adam said. He put his own bagel down even though he was famished.

"To the man who got me my new job," Gansey said. They clinked cans, companionable. Adam felt strange and lucky, entirely unlike himself. When he was done with his bagel, he leaned over, rested his head in one hand, and looked up at Gansey. His goggles had left red marks around his eyes. Adam felt a a fondness so foreign to him that it was painful. He did not know if he was pleased or furious that Gansey could be marred like a normal person now. 

"Does it hurt?" he asked, tapping at his own face to show he meant the marks.

Gansey looked down at him, quizzical. He took a swig of his coke and Adam watched his tanned throat bob in the sun.

"I think you've suffered worse hurts than this, Adam," Gansey said, after a moment. His voice was low but firm. Adam's fragile good cheer was extinguished. He stood abruptly and gathered up his trash, pitching it in the can Boyd kept just outside.

"Adam," Gansey called out. Adam ignored him. Distantly, he heard the behemoth roar of diesel. Flashy. But a customer. Good. He walked down the drive to meet them and then suddenly wished he hadn't.

Ronan Lynch's shark-nosed BMW pulled in. Adam backed up the drive.

"Adam," Gansey said again, when Adam backed into him.

Adam pushed his goggles into his hands again.

"Get inside," he said. "Come on. Go."

If Lynch found out that Gansey was working here, then Adam was sure Kavinsky would find out, and Adam did not want Kavinsky coming by. Kavinsky had never come by in all the time Lynch had been using Boyd's before, but Adam was sure he would, if it meant a chance to torment Gansey. Kavinsky was very obvious about his envy for Gansey.

But Gansey didn't go inside. He finished his bagel and carefully wiped his hands on a napkin he'd brought, then just as carefully folded the napkin into the plastic wrapping on his lap. He stood. 

"Lynch," he said pensively, as he walked to the garbage can. It put him right in view of the drivers' side window. Adam watched, uneasy, as Lynch's pale, well-muscled forearm, hanging out of the window, stilled. Then it jerked inside. Then, with great slamming glory, Lynch exited the car.

"Dick Gansey?" he said. Spat. Lynch didn't say words as much as hurl them, uncaring of how he deployed them.

"Just Dick here, please," Gansey said politely, tapping his new nametag.

Lynch whirled on Adam.

"What's he doing here?"

"What are you?" Adam said. He was sick of saying it. "There is nothing wrong with your car."

"I need my tire pressure checked," Lynch said.

"I told you: you can do that yourself. And we can't check the tire pressure on a car that's just been driven. The tires need to be cold. When they're hot, the air inside expands," Adam said.

Lynch shrugged. He leaned against the front of his car, a viper sunning itself. He said, "I'll wait."

Boyd chose this moment to come outside. Boyd always had awful timing when it came to Lynch. He never let Adam alone long enough to drive Lynch away.

"Ronan," Boyd said warmly.

"Boyd," Lynch said, not warmly at all.

"What's going on with it?" Boyd said, turning to Adam and Gansey.

Even though he was annoyed at Lynch, Adam knew this was an opportunity for Gansey. He glanced at Gansey. Nodded his encouragement.

Gansey said, "He wants his tire pressure checked but you can't do that when a car's just been driven. He'll wait while the air in the tires cools down. Then we can do it."

Pleased, Boyd clapped a hand on Gansey's shoulder. 

"Good man, Dick," he said. "Fast learner. You can do this." Then, to Lynch, "You're in good hands with Dick."

Lynch's lip curled.

"I want Parrish," he said, pointing at Adam like he thought everyone here might be confused.

"Parrish is busy," Adam said evenly. 

Then he turned and went back into the garage. He thought that would be the end of it -- he still had the Jeep to finish -- but Gansey strode along beside him.

"I don't actually know how to check tire pressure," he told Adam. 

Adam cursed inwardly. Of course Gansey didn't know how, though it was easy. They'd only need a gauge. He led Gansey to Boyd's cramped office, where he knew there would be one somewhere. Probably somewhere buried deep, though.

"Does he come here often?" Gansey asked, as Adam rooted around in the crates under Boyd's desk, full of car magazines and receipts and old tools.

"Too often," Adam said.

"What does he do when he comes here?" Gansey asked, as though this mattered. 

"Makes up imaginary problems about his car," Adam said.

Lynch had some kind of Munchausen By Proxy when it came to the BMW. Also, he was an asshole.

"He throws money at Boyd, so there's no chance of getting him to go away," Adam added. He found a gauge and a pamphlet intended for customers. _Tire Pressure and You_. He handed both to Gansey. 

Gansey did not comment on the gauge or on _Tire Pressure and You_ , but he did raise an eyebrow and say, flatly, "He pays you? Catastrophic."

"That's a biblical word is it, Dick?" said Boyd, coming up on them now.

Gansey's raised eyebrow stayed decidedly raised. 

_Yes, sir_ , Adam mouthed at him.

"Yes, sir," he said firmly. He seemed to be thinking something over. Then, before Adam could stop him, he turned on his heel and went out to where Lynch was, like he thought he could find an answer there.

Boyd and Adam were left staring at eachother in the office.

"Might be good to give Dick some of these old magazines," Adam said lamely. "So he can study."

Boyd nodded thoughtfully. 

"We'll get him reintegrated yet, Adam," he said, more affected by the cult idea than Adam would ever have expected of him. Then he sent Adam packing back to the Jeep.

The time-consuming job became more excruciating yet. Now when Adam took breaks, it was to find excuses to walk outside, where Boyd was talking Gansey through the BMW's fuel system as Lynch reclined in a deck chair, evidently winning more points with Boyd by allowing the use of his car as a teaching tool. He and Gansey could not have looked more different, Gansey glowing and regal even as he worked, Lynch long and pale and promising ill. A banked explosion. He looked at Adam every time Adam came out, sidelong. He thought Adam was too stupid to notice. Adam noticed.

Eventually Adam just approached him.

"Look," he said desperately. "Just don't tell Kavinsky he's here."

It was a stupid plea. It would fall on deaf ears. But he had to try.

Lynch smoothed down his Sunday-church suit, oddly formal on him, and pulled down his sunglasses lazily. White sunglasses, like Kavinsky's. Adam flushed as Lynch regarded him, but he wasn't flushing because Lynch was regarding him, he was flushing because the sunglasses made it impossible not to think of what Lynch got up to with his friends. Lynch was awful, but Kavinsky was _foul_. Lynch could have better. 

That was the worst thing. Lynch could have liked anyone. He could have liked someone like Gansey. But he chose to waste his time with Kavinsky instead.

"What do you care if I tell K?" Lynch said now. 

"We don't want him around here."

Lynch shrugged. "Probably even K will pay, like anybody else."

"We don't want his money."

"Why not, poor boy? You need it."

Annoyed, Adam remembered Gansey telling him about Lynch giving the him supplies to fix the Camaro, Lynch giving him money. Maybe Lynch was more like Kavinsky than Adam thought. Maybe Lynch liked games. Kavinsky certainly did. Adam could always tell when people did.

"You're gonna regret it if you mess with Gansey," Adam said. 

He would make Lynch regret it. He didn't know how, but he would.

The look Lynch gave him was inscrutable for a split-second, before it deepened into clear, pure rage. Lynch wore that well. Sometimes Adam thought it was his only look. He opened his mouth, and Adam stood his ground, uncaring, ready to take whatever he slung.

"Adam, what are you doing out here?" Boyd called out, jogging up to them. "Get inside. You're nowhere near done with that Jeep." 

To Lynch Boyd said, "We're ready now. Should've cooled down quite a bit."

Adam went inside to finish the job on the Jeep, fuming. He felt as though it would all come crumbling down now, as though he'd had something good -- that rare moment, that companionable time with Gansey.

But it was stupid, mourning that. Gansey did now know him, not really. No, if Kavinsky caused trouble for them, it was not that Adam might lose Gansey, because he and Gansey were such incompatible concepts that it was ridiculous to assume he had Gansey at all. 

But Gansey would suffer. That was what would happen. Gansey could suffer now.

Adam realized, the thought spreading inside him -- foreign, sore, awful as a heart attack -- that he did not want to see that. 

He would have to find a way around this. He would have to frighten Kavinsky off. He wondered if he was crazy, if this was doable. 

But Gansey, driving Adam home that night, had a different perspective.

"I don't think Lynch will tell," he said.

Adam stared at him.

"He hurls abuse with the best of them, believe me. I worked on his car long enough today to know that," Gansey said, passing a thumb over his lip. "But I'll bet you the best wrench he won't tell."

"We don't have a best wrench. They're all just wrenches," Adam said. "And you don't know that--"

"I do," Gansey said, firm about it. 

His voice was glorious and self-assured. Like he thought he still had enough money to control these things, like he thought he still had the power to just say things and make them real.


	4. Chapter 4

One night, as Blue was subtly tallying tips at the front just before closing time, a boy walked in. Blue didn't stop tallying. She hated it when raven boys came to Nino's just before closing. Raven boys didn't think that Nino's should ever close; they became affronted whenever the staff suggested it might.

"We're closing," she said.

"I know," said the boy. He had an unexpectedly familiar accent. Summer nights, cool iced tea, the chirp of cicadas. Not a raven boy, then. Maybe a raven boy? Raven sweater over his shoulder. Dirty blue coveralls over the rest of him. 

"Sorry to bother you, miss," he said, frowning. Or maybe this was his usual expression. He was intriguing, tall and slim with delicate features and very pretty eyes, but Blue could tell that he didn't have the kind of face that was used to smiling much. He added, "Is Gansey here? No need to bother him if he's busy, but I have something for him."

 _Adam_ , Blue thought.

The thought was a little surprising. She hadn't expected Adam to look like this.

She'd heard about Adam. She'd heard so much that Adam had begun to prompt a strange bitterness in her. He belonged to an easy roadside world. He could fix a car, he could fix hurt hands. He knew about physics and memorized everything there was to understand regarding world religions. He was careful and limited with his words, but could arrange them in valuable and sensible order when it came time to turn in a paper. He knew where there was work. He knew where there were bargains. 

Blue knew those last things too, of course. But Blue didn't go to Aglionby, Blue didn't live freely and ferally on the edges of town. Blue was not some strange impressive prep school scholarship nomad, and Blue was not ever going to be revered for her sensible advice because sensible advice was no surprise coming from Blue. She was not a boy.

It wasn't Adam's fault. Adam didn't know what he had, the strange powerful freedom it gave him to roam around fixing cars with Gansey all day. At least, that was how Gansey seemed to present their activities. No one had ever taught Blue to fix a car, though now she thought she would have liked to have learned. 

As if in answer to this, Adam took a stack of car magazines out of his worn backpack.

"I'd appreciate it if I could leave these somewhere for him," he told Blue.

Gansey chose this moment to come clear table 1. He bestowed a dazzling smile on Adam when he saw him. 

"Adam! We're closing soon--"

"I know," Adam repeated. 

"Want to help?"

"No, but I will if you like," Adam said. Blue found him a little more likable despite herself.

"Can you do it?" Gansey asked. 

"Yes."

"Do you have to be home?"

"No, not for a while."

"So you'll do it?"

"I said yes."

But it occurred to Blue that they were getting ahead of themselves. Noah would want to help Gansey too. He was waiting in the back right now. He'd appeared four minutes after Gansey had, even paler than usual, and covered his face with his hands when Blue had tried to talk to him. 

"I'm sorry," he'd said. "I'm sorry."

"Just tell me if you were having fun with me," Blue had told him, uncomfortable. 

"No," Noah had said. "No. I don't do that to people anymore. I'm glad I don't."

And that was all he would say on it. Blue gave up on getting more. Noah seemed to visibly wilt at her questions. Any secrets he had about people dying were locked inside him for the time being. It made Blue uneasy. She didn't want him to have secrets, especially not ones that sounded so awful. She wanted to be friends with Noah. Even if he could be horrible, he seemed to need it. 

Still, now Blue felt that there were too many raven boys for the occasion. How many raven boys did it take to close a restaurant?

"You can't have all your friends show up to do your job for you," she told Gansey, turning to help him clear table 1. "Donny will notice if there are like ten extra boys out here."

"Ten?" Gansey said primly. "Two. Adam?"

Adam didn't look up from where he was stacking his magazines under the bench, a temporary hiding place. "Noah here?" 

"Of course," Gansey said. 

"Two," Adam confirmed. 

Gansey reached into his pocket. He pulled out his car keys and tossed them at Adam. Adam caught them easily, like he received Gansey's most prized possessions every day. 

"Put the magazines in the car," Gansey instructed. Adam nodded. 

But before he left he turned to Blue. Formal. Too-polite, with a manner that ceded all power. 

"It's alright if I stay, miss?" he asked. Again Blue heard the distinct summer quality of his voice. 

"Jane," Gansey said, managing to make even a plea sound regal. 

Blue shrugged. Adam seemed to know this was the most he would get out of her, so he went to put the magazines in the car. 

"I don't even have ten friends," Gansey informed Blue, as they brought their stacks of dirty dishes to the back. "I have three. And they aren't all staying to help me with my job. You said you were leaving early today."

She had said that. She had things to do tonight. And she didn't actually like staying later than she had to. 

But she didn't want closing Nino's to become some raven boy activity, something wholly for Gansey and Noah and the elusive Adam. She thought of the possible jokes they could have, the vaguely mysterious boy pranks they could engage in. She didn't know why it bothered her, but it bothered her, the thought of being left out of that.

So she told Donny that she would oversee the closing up, if he wanted.

"Great," he said, pulling on his jacket and preparing to leave. "But I'm not paying you for it."

She hadn't been expecting him to. This was precisely why it made no sense to stay. But stay she did, after Laurence and the other kitchen staff had gone, after Cialina and Cherry had gathered up their purses and waved goodbye.

Adam and Noah emerged from their corner near the mops. Adam came straight to her.

"What should I do?" he asked.

Blue became just a little more pleased with him. She gave him the back tables, numbers 15 to 20. He worked with silent, single-minded purpose, needing very little direction.

"I did warn you that he was terrifyingly efficient, didn't I?" Gansey said, coming out now with a rag and spray bottle and attacking table 12.

"I can hear you," Adam called out.

"Good," said Gansey. "Don't let Noah near the buffet."

Adam went to corral Noah, who was mashing cold meatloaf into jello. Adam frog-marched him to the back and began teaching him how to stack chairs on tables. Noah seemed to be picking it up only reluctantly and under extreme duress.

Gansey watched them, lordly and fond.

"I'm glad he came," he told Blue, as they worked together to clear and sweep under the front tables. "I've been wanting you to meet him, Jane."

"He's not what I expected."

"He's a little socially-inhibited."

"That isn't what I meant."

Gansey looked at her oddly. 

Blue didn't even know how to begin explaining. 

"Generally, mechanic kids from Henrietta aren't like him," was what she said instead.

"He's not just a mechanic," Gansey pointed out. "He works at a trailer factory too. And at a --" He broke off. "Adam! What's your third job?"

"Demo yard," Adam called back. "When they need me, anyway."

This was even more at odds with the fragile, unusual look of him than the other two jobs. Blue gave up on trying to explain. She and Gansey moved to mopping the entrance and Adam took up the cause of the buffet without being asked, directing Noah so he didn't make it worse. As Blue passed them with the mops, she heard Noah say accusingly, "Do you like Blue?"

Adam said, "Sure. She's awfully pretty. Nice. Not stuck up."

The part of Blue that enjoyed compliments warred with the part of her that wanted better ones. She did not want to be _nice_ or _pretty_ , and _not stuck up_ was fine, but not exactly a ringing endorsement. 

"She doesn't want you talking about her," Blue heard Noah say suddenly. She felt warmer towards Noah because of it.

"You brought her up," Adam said.

When they were done clearing and closing, they walked out to the parking lot together, Blue to one side of Gansey, Adam to the other. Noah slid in front somehow and vanished into the Camaro. Frustrated for some reason, Blue took her leave of them by the lamppost where she'd tied her bike. 

"Good night," Adam said politely.

"Tomorrow, Jane," Gansey said, with a splendid smile and a raised hand. Blue shot him a royal wave in response

But as he walked with Adam to his car, she heard him say, "Do you have to be home yet? We missed dinner. The dining hall will be closed."

Adam said, "This late, we could go to the gas station, get some milk and bread or something." 

"A _gas station_?" Blue said loudly.

They turned to look at her. The streetlamps made Gansey glow even more than usual and cast shadows along the unusual lines of Adam's face.

"You could eat at my place again," she offered. It was better than a gas station.

"Again?" Adam said.

"Yogurt," Gansey said, nodding.

Adam stared at him. So did Blue.

"I like yogurt," Gansey said quickly. "Come on, Jane. Let's all do that." He came forward now and picked up her bike easily, carried it to the trunk of the Camaro. Adam lingered to walk to the car with her.

"I think I should go home," he said quickly. "I don't want to impose--"

"I invited you," Blue said. She wanted him there out of a sense of competition. She wanted him there because she wanted him to come up with better compliments for her. She wasn't even sure why she wanted him there. She just knew she did. Since Noah had the front seat, she sat next to Adam in the back. They spent the first few minutes carefully arranging Gansey's paper buildings, compelled by some strange mutual desire to protect his work.

"He talks about you," Adam said softly, as they piled the local bank on top of the local Walgreens. He shot Blue a smile. It transformed his whole face and then departed too quickly, leaving him terse again.

"Does he say I'm pretty and nice and not stuck up?" Blue said. Even in the low light of the backseat, she could tell that Adam reddened.

But he still said, low, "He says nicer things than that."

Blue felt something in her spark, some foolish and dancing warmth.

"Oh," she said.

Adam sat back against the corner of the seat and closed his eyes, but she thought she saw him nod.

"He says nice things about you, too," she admitted.

Now she knew she saw his eyelashes flicker, dust-grey in the dark. 

"What are you talking about back there?" Gansey asked.

"These buildings," Adam said quickly. A paper library rested on his knees.

"We crushed your gas station," Blue said.

"Three dollars per gallon. It was asking for it," said Gansey.

The foolish and dancing warmth danced faster, harder, furiously inside her chest.

"Are you warm?" Blue hissed at Adam. If he understood, she thought. If he understood, then he was alright.

Even if he didn't understand, he didn't bat an eyelash at the question.

"Every last shabby corner of me," he told her.

Blue was glad she'd invited him. They were companionable the rest of the way. She answered Gansey with nonsense when he demanded to know what they were talking about, and Adam quietly offered support each time. When they arrived, she led them all to the door. Then, just as she put her key in, Maura opened it.

"Blue Sargent," Maura said, in a voice that was a Voice.

Right. No. Right. This was what she'd had to do tonight. There was to have been a group scrying session. One they would needed Blue for, because no one at Fox Way was actually all that good at scrying without Blue there to amplify what they could see. 

But Blue was late. And she'd brought boys.

"A calamity," Persephone commented quietly, from just behind Maura's elbow.

"Which one?" said Calla, somewhere inside.

"I don't know, but there are enough of them that one of them will be," Persephone said, sighing. Then she retreated. Blue stared at her mother.

"Sorry?"

"You take up with a bunch of boys at once," Maura said, throwing up her hands. 

"I haven't taken up with even one before," Blue pointed out. "Maybe I'm making up for lost time."

"Great," Maura said. "A logical and practical daughter."

Blue said, "That isn't great?"

"I'll allow it," Maura said. She moved aside to let them all in.

"We couldn't do it tonight anyway," she told Blue. She, Persephone, and Calla surveyed each raven boy in turn. Adam surprised them briefly. Calla said something like, "They multiply!" and Persephone said something like, "It's so loud. I'll get the cards." 

"They're here for dinner," Blue said quickly. She didn't want anyone offering any readings right now. "You couldn't scry tonight?"

"We've been thinking of it as nothing more than the corpse road," Maura said. She sounded furious. Not furious at the three boys in her house, though. Furious about this business with the scrying session. She said, "Neeve made it deeper. Read it deeper. Ley line."

"Ley line?" Blue echoed. Blue had heard Neeve say that, in the short time she'd been here. But Maura didn't often use the term. She preferred corpse road. Corpse road was the homier, more Henrietta alternative.

"We're using the kitchen," Maura said now, "so take your boys somewhere else. They have five minutes to grab what they want from the fridge."

"They're teenage boys," Calla reminded her.

"They have thirty seconds to grab what they want from the fridge," Maura said.

They ended up outside by the beech tree. Gansey had a great deal of yogurt, which he gave to Blue, as well as a pack of baby carrots and two cold apples. Adam had a takeout carton of old beef and broccoli and a cup of tea, which Blue thought Persephone might have handed him. Noah had some chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream and a tupperware container of Orla's homemade hair tonic. Orla always insisted that it had to be refrigerated and that it was a vital natural beauty remedy. Blue knew it was mostly vinegar and raw eggs.

In any case Blue, who knew where the plates were and who knew which shelf Jimi stored dinner on for latecomers, passed around the actual dinner. Spaghetti. She watched them all tear into it. Or at least Adam and Gansey did. Noah was shaking the plastic container of hair tonic.

"That's not for eating," Blue told him. She watched Adam take a tentative sip of his tea, look alarmed, and set it down by the roots of the tree.

"I don't eat," Noah informed her, and kept right on shaking.

His plate did look untouched. After a moment, Blue picked it up, waiting for a reaction. He gave her none. Testing, curious, she split it between Adam's plate and Gansey's. Gansey protested, but Noah didn't look upset in the slightest.

"Thanks, Noah," Adam said, when he'd finished. "Thank you, Blue."

Then he looked carefully at her, then even more carefully at the packet of carrots. She didn't know why; she wasn't going to stop him. In the next thirty minutes, he and Gansey cleared their plates, the carrots, the apples, the takeout, and started on the ice cream. They had no cups for the orange juice, so out of politeness, perhaps, they left that alone.

"Jane," Gansey said, when they were through, "what's a ley line?"

-

A ley line was an alignment. A ley line was an energy path. A ley line was a road so old that man had been walking it before man had words, a network of markers, burrows, cairns, burial sites, henges, spiritual power. 

It felt profoundly mystical to Gansey. It felt right.

"None of that's real, though," Adam had said, after they'd thanked the psychics and started for the car. "It's like believing in auras and crystals."

Gansey had jerked a thumb back at 300 Fox Way, at the battered, blinking sign in the window. P S Y C H I C T A R O T.

"Maybe they believe in auras and crystals."

In the psychics' defense, it wasn't like crystals weren't perfectly real things. Solid substances with the atoms arranged in lattices, et cetera. There had been a chapter on them in Gansey's sophomore year geology textbook. He'd found it very dry. Blue's family seemed like they could make it more interesting.

But he didn't have time to explore ley lines, not really. He had work. Adam had work. Blue had work. He had crew, the mornings he didn't have work; and the rare evenings Adam had free were spent closing up Nino's together and going over drive belts, battery replacement, oil changes and engine tune-ups.

But exams were coming soon, and with them Aglionby spring study week. A half-day on the last Friday, and after that no classes for seven days. Gansey and Adam went to tell Boyd that they could cover extra hours at the garage, as they'd discussed between them, but then Gansey hesitated.

Blue had said there was a ley line running right through Henrietta. Right here. In the town Gansey himself was consigned to, in this lonely corner. Blue had said that she could show it to them.

Had he passed over it before? Slept on it? Did it thrum just beyond where he could see, a path countless others had walked before him, an energy road to link the most disparate corners of the earth? What if it cut through D.C., where his parents had lived? What if it cut through the Alps? What if it cut through Glenn Lane? 

At night, staring up at the roof of the Camaro, Gansey tried to picture it and follow it in his mind's eye. It would link this town, dusty and welcoming, Adam and Blue, to even the corners the Ganseys had lived in. It would always have linked them. Adam and Blue could have been here, waiting, on the line. And a little further north on the line there would have been a heedless young man, the worst kind. The kind that had everything and did nothing with it. A spoiled, soft thing.

Gansey wondered about that young man.

"You should never try to be superior to others," his mother had told him once. Sensible advice. Ganseys did not compete like that; Ganseys did not have to try. Instead, she'd instructed, "You should be superior to your former self."

He was trying. He was trying not to be who he was, who he'd been. He was trying, and he wondered if -- if he could establish some link to Adam and Blue, some connection they all shared, if this would make a difference. 

He liked the thought of paths that could connect the world, that could defy money, cruelty, wrongness. Loss.

"We're taking off Sunday afternoon," he told Boyd now. "If we're working the rest of the week."

For a second, Adam looked angry. They hadn't discussed this. They'd been too busy going over their work plans, going over car repair, subtly not-fighting. The latest bruise spread across Adam's collarbone. Adam had not been truthful when he'd said he didn't have to be home for a while, the other day. Adam was often not truthful about things like curfews, and the trailer park, and his father. 

"Jane is off Sundays," Gansey told him now in an undertone.

Boyd just looked at Gansey, then at Adam. Then, like he thought this was significant, he repeated, "Sunday, Dick?"

"Sunday."

"Makes sense you'd want to start taking off Sundays now that you know the basics. Special day for some people," Boyd said. He was looking straight at Gansey but he made a strange, shrugging _what can you do?_ gesture in the general direction of Adam.

"Is it?" Gansey asked. 

"You come in every other day and Sunday is yours," Boyd said supportively. "How about you, Adam?"

Adam started to say, "No, I can't--" but Gansey caught his sleeve.

"Parrish, she can show us the line," he reminded him, low again.

Adam relented. 

"I'll work when he works, this week," he said.

So that was alright. And alerting Blue was the work of a moment; he saw Blue nearly every evening at Nino's. Noah took more wrangling, because Noah came and went, but he generally appeared at night and so Gansey was able to invite him Saturday evening.

So, on Sunday, they went to explore the line. 

Because Blue knew the way, she got the front seat now. But Noah was hell on Gansey's ever-increasing model Henrietta, now made not simply of notepaper but also auto magazine, popsicle sticks, spare straws and plastic forks from Nino's. So Blue rescued the Starbucks, the Walgreens, and the local police station and sat with them on her lap. Adam gathered up the rest and placed himself between them and Noah, then began tabbing unread magazines with the things Gansey still needed to learn. Noah tapped on the back of Gansey's seat in time to the radio instead of dismantling buildings. The taps were so light that Gansey didn't feel them, even though he could see Noah doing it in the mirror.

"Where to, Jane?" he asked Blue.

She was wearing something that cut out fetchingly over her shoulders only to crawl like knit green spiderwebbing down over her hands, looping over her middle fingers. It was somewhat medieval. Whenever Gansey tried not to appreciate it too obviously, in case this bothered her, he found himself looking back at Adam, dusty and elegant, in the backseat.

This again. 

If only he had known them before he'd needed to know them. Now he felt false about it, though he knew that this wasn't false. This was very real.

"There's a lot of places the ley line's supposed to cut through," Blue said. "Which one do you want?"

"The best one," Gansey requested.

"Oh, sure. What's our measure for best?" Blue said.

"Energy," Noah hummed in the backseat.

"Not too distant," said Adam.

"Any place you've ever seen anything happen, Jane," Gansey said.

Blue shifted. 

"Happen?"

During their free period -- the one that had formerly been Latin class -- he and Adam often went to the library to study. Adam studied. Adam was good at that and Gansey supported him in it. Then, while supporting Adam, he calmly set aside his own English and World Religions and AP Physics books and looked for better ones.

Aglionby had a good library. In the basement, in the older section of the building, were the books on myths. Phenomena. Local ephemera. Books no one seemed to have read for years, so that the only signature on some was that of their former Latin teacher, who had quit and moved on to teach somewhere else, probably. The school kept these books as a curiosity. Or perhaps for completion's sake. _Energy Trails of the Appalachian Mountains._ _Ghosts and Ghouls of Harrisville and Surrounding Environs._

They were quaint, unusual. Sometimes they had grisly illustrations. Gansey, who'd loved to read as a child and had lost the time for it over the years, would take the books back to their study room and point things out to Adam when Adam looked at him questioningly. 1888. Myra Dittley hanged, and then the trees of Broward Street began to wail and would not stop for seven months. 1923. The first automobile in Henrietta was lost near a copse by Fuller's Farm, however it was that one lost the town's first automobile. It was recovered three days later, showing signs of extreme age, despite having been purchased only a month before.

"Every town has ghost stories, Gansey," Adam would murmur.

Perhaps. But if these ghost stories could be linked to the ley line, then Gansey wanted to be the one to link them.

"For example, Jane," he said now, "have you ever seen anything unusual along the line? Is there a place you know might be linked to local history? In my general reading about ley lines, I keep finding that they are often linked to ghosts."

Noah giggled. Adam sighed. Blue inhaled sharply.

"Ghosts?"

"Phantasms," Gansey said.

"I think she knows what ghosts are. You don't have to use a more complicated word that means the same thing," Adam muttered.

"Who knows what ghosts are?" Noah said, accusatory about it for some reason.

"Well, I've never seen one, so not me," Gansey said. "But surely living around the line has had an effect on Jane, because she is a psychic--"

Not psychic. He struggled to recall what she'd told him.

"I amplify," she said flatly.

"A pyschic power outlet," Gansey said. "Living on the ley line, and, unlike Adam, you knew you were living on it all this time. So can you remember any time you were ever affected? Any time you've seen anything strange?"

"Only once," Blue said. Her voice was still flat.

"Then we go where that happened," Gansey decided. "Directions, please, Jane."

Her directions didn't disappoint. He'd been hoping for something out of the way, something wild and ruined and old. He got exactly that. At Blue's instructions, he took them off the main roads and then off the backroads, down wooded trails cupped by hills. Out here vines ran over the fragile, ancient husks of houses; roots reached up and broke into the road. Blue's ley-place was a church, overrun with colonies of ladybugs, picturesque and and ancient. It was circled by a low stone wall with a gate that had survived the years, but the headstones dotting the space around it had not fared so well and were crumbling or crumbled. The entire space was bracketed by sleeping trees just coaxed awake and starting to bud. Gansey pulled the Camaro up and stepped out to survey it all, green and lovely in the soft spring light.

"Now what?" Adam asked faintly from behind him.

"We explore," Gansey said. "Unless Jane wants to tell us what she saw here."

Somehow he knew she wouldn't want to. It had been in her voice before, guarded and suddenly private. When she shook her head, he didn't press it. He stepped through the gate and crossed to the church, on the alert for anything unusual. He thought he could hear the others following him, but when he turned it was only Noah and Adam. Blue remained by the wall, staring.

"Were you born here? In Henrietta?" Noah asked suddenly. He asked it like something had prompted him to, but what that something was, Gansey couldn't tell.

"No," he told Noah. 

"I was," Adam said softly.

It didn't seem to make a difference, because neither he nor Adam encountered anything supernatural in the churchyard. Noah was not even looking. He toed at the gravestones, reducing them even further to rubble. Adam, by contrast, cleaned one or two, wiping away dirt and overgrown crabgrass and squinting at the faded names. Trying them out in his Henrietta voice, making them long and song-sounding. 

"Vert, Neuhmann, Powell..."

Gansey followed the path to the church. It had no doors, just a yawning black mouth. Inside, the ceiling had collapsed, the pews had long since rotted. There was a space for the altar and no more. Oak trees thrust their limbs in through the windows. Adam's voice faded as soon as he stepped inside. Here, all was silence.

Or nearly. 

The oak trees gave the tiny interior church a false canopy. Beneath that, it was gloom and dark until Gansey's eyes adjusted, and as they did he heard a faint scratching, and as he heard that he was able to see what was making it.

Birds. Large and black. He blinked at them as his brain informed him that they must be ravens, as they continued to scratch with their breaks in the dirt. Hop, scratch. Hop, scratch. In a sort of circle. Gansey stepped closer. They kept scratching, not looking up, perhaps unaware that their behavior was not the least bit appropriately birdlike.

When Gansey was less than a foot away, they stopped. This should have been less eerie than the concert of scratches in the dirt. It wasn't. They moved as one; they stopped as one. Each bird did exactly as the others, exactly when the others did it. All three lifted their heads in tandem, cocked their heads, turned and looked.

At Gansey. 

Their eyes were as black as their plumage, and yet he could tell they were looking at him. As one they darted their heads low and out to him, opened their beaks. He stilled. He felt certain they would -- would not caw, perhaps. 

_Speak_.

His phone buzzed. 

He grappled for it in the gloom and the moment he looked away, the ravens were gone. It wasn't that they had flown away. He would have heard wings flapping, felt a change in the air. But that didn't happen. They'd just vanished. His phone continued to buzz.

When he picked it up, Maitland's smooth voice said, "Richard?"

He must have conveyed affirmation somehow, because then Maitland said, "We have news, Richard. We have an offer."

An offer. An offer for what? He couldn't connect the pieces. His mind was still on the ravens.

"Richard, listen to me. I want you and I to sit down this week to talk about it -- Richard? Can you hear me? I think the is connection bad. Where are you?"

"I can hear you," Gansey said. He tried to focus on Maitland. An offer. This was important. This -- this was real life. Maitland and the inquest and his mother's name. 

"Do you have time for me to come down and meet you?" Maitland said. "Or I could send someone and you could come to Arlington. I should explain it to you in person--"

"Tell me now," Gansey said.

He wouldn't wait. Not because of the money; it wasn't the money he cared about. First he'd had too much, now he had too little. He felt sick and cold about either option. Money was ephemeral, worthless. There were other things in this world. 

Like those ravens that didn't move the way ravens were supposed to. 

"It's like this, Richard," Maitland said, sounding uneasy. "Are you sitting down?"

"Tell me."

"If you know anything," Maitland said. "If your mother told you anything -- if you weren't being honest before--"

"I told you the truth before," Gansey said impatiently. "She never told me about any of those things. She wouldn't have. She's innocent."

Silence, for a moment.

"If you testify and confirm that she isn't, we can get something back," Maitland said in a rush. "Not all of it. But something. More than enough to put you through college and have you settled somewhere, Richard, if that's what you want to do with it."

The horrible cold settled in him. 

"You want me to lie?" he said. "She didn't do _any_ of those things--"

"Richard, it's my job to relay the offer," Maitland said. "I wanted to tell you in person. To explain. If you'd come up to Arlington--"

"I'm not moving from this town until you come up with a better option," Gansey said. He cut the call and stared at the phone in his hand, like it was something treacherous. It buzzed again after a moment. He didn't pick up. His mother. His mother, strong and yet never coarse or rude about it, promising and yet never haughty. Untouchable in life. 

It wasn't true, what they said about her. It wasn't. His breath came very quickly, and he felt as though his skin were burning. He thought suddenly, inexplicably, of dying. No one had told him the particulars of the accident. No one had explained how they'd gone -- if his mother had lived a little longer after Helen and his father; if she'd tried to call for help.

He was kneeling in the dirt now, phone slipping out of his hands, still buzzing.

"Gansey?" someone said behind him. Their voice seemed to come from far away. 

"Gansey!"

It was Adam. He was with Blue. They came up on either side. Blue's hands were on his shoulders, her soft arms around him. Adam took the phone, looked at him, pressed the button to ignore the call and make the buzzing stop.

"Not good news?" he said, after Gansey had rested in Blue's arms for a minute.

Gansey shook his head. Adam sat next to him in the dirt, saying nothing, waiting patiently. Gansey closed his eyes and held on to Blue harder, but reached out a hand. After a moment, Adam's own slender hand closed on it.

They stayed like that for some time. Gansey wasn't sure how long. He also wasn't sure when, exactly, Noah joined them, but Noah did, looking rumpled and faded in the dusty gloom. 

"I wonder if you were born on the line," Gansey told Noah, when he finally found his voice. He wanted them all to fit, wanted them to have always fit, no matter the circumstances. He wanted the ley line to do that for him. Link Gansey to Blue and Adam here, and to Noah -- where?

"I wasn't born on the line," Noah said. He emphasized _born_ for some reason. Gansey squinted at him through the leaf-dappled dark.

Then Blue, still kneeling before him, took in a sharp breath.

"Did you draw that?" she asked.

Gansey pushed back from her so that he could look at her. He didn't know what she was talking about. She was very pale. Her green-knit arm pointed at the dirt, at the place where the ravens had been.

"Did you draw that?" she demanded again.

Gansey had to take off his glasses and clean them before he could get a good look. In the dirt, barely noticeable in the faint light, were three curving, intersecting lines. They formed something like a triangle that was not at all a triangle. He stared at it, then shook his head.

Carefully, he described the three ravens. He wanted them to understand. Those had not been proper ravens; this was not just any place. He had come here wanting something to happen, and something had. Not a call to get his money back, because that was useless to him, that wasn't the way to do it. That had been cheap, Maitland's call. Wrong.

But the ravens had been real. 

Gansey went over the ravens' movements, their strange coordination, as they all walked back to the car. Blue took it in with plain interest.

"I could ask my mother about ravens," she said. "She's definitely drawn that symbol before. She drew it once on our shower door."

"Echoes of ravens," Noah said, passively accepting the whole thing. "Scratch artist birds."

"I think it's the symbol of the ley line," Blue said. 

A part of Gansey felt better and truer when he heard this. As though he were on the right track, somehow. Both Blue and Noah seemed to accept the story of the ravens. Blue maybe because she was used to it, Noah because he was Noah and not terribly confrontational. 

But Adam, who spent the evening teaching Gansey about radiators and engine coolant caps, had reservations.

"You saw them when you got the call about your mother," he said flatly, when they were alone with the auto magazines.

"I saw them before I got the call about my mother."

"You were thinking about her, though."

He hadn't been. He felt guilty now, knowing he hadn't been. Sometimes her death didn't feel real. Sometimes it fell out of his mind. Then, when it hit him, it was like a seizure.

"Gansey," Adam said. "Are you sure all this -- ley lines, magic, all of this stuff -- are you sure this isn't you just wanting to believe something? Because you lost all your money?"

This was so insulting that Gansey would be doing him a favor ignoring it. In answer, he said, "Explain the symbol in the dirt, Parrish. The one the ravens drew."

Adam shook his head slowly. But he couldn't explain it. All he could do was mutter, as though unimpressed, that ravens were hardly all that unusual.

"I saw a raven at school last week," he said, flatly. "Ronan Lynch had it. It was some kind of designer pet."

-

It did not escape Blue that on top of Noah having his own strange secrets, Gansey and Adam had secrets between them. 

It was a little better now that she was the acknowledged expert on the ley line. Adam informed her that Gansey spent far too much time studying it, studying strange happenings and urban legends. But Blue did not need legends. She lived with legends. Collectively, the women of Fox Way were so psychic that they could floss new legends right out of their teeth in the mornings if they wanted to. A vague prophecy here. A guarded prediction there.

So though Gansey studied the line, Blue understood it. Blue knew some of the places it cut through. Blue knew it connected the dead and the supernaturally-inclined. And Blue, who was used to being the odd one out at home and the odd one out at school because of her home, was almost flattered to be the center of a group for once, the one who _knew_ things. 

But she didn't, quite. She was not like Noah, a rumpled vagrant, able to visit Gansey whenever he wanted. She was not like Gansey, invited by Adam to learn all kinds of useful automotive tricks. She was not like Adam, with a place at Aglionby. That was the worst part -- that they all went to school together. They saw each other daily; they had developed strange boy codes around it, traded strange boy knowledge.

They still hadn't invited Blue to come learn about cars.

Gansey made up for it, just barely, by inviting her along when he planned his ley-excursions. He'd found an old book of maps in the Aglionby library that purported to chart the path several mystical revivalist groups had taken through Virginia during the second Great Awakening. Blue had confirmed for him that yes, many of the places charted fell on the line. Now he was obsessed with visiting all of them.

"Did your mother tell you more about the ley line symbol?" he said. He took the turnoff behind Blue's school, down a back highway, to a part of Henrietta that Blue rarely went to. Blue frowned.

"My mother was cryptic at me," she informed him.

Maura hadn't been interested explaining about the symbol. Blue, who usually persisted in asking things even when Maura didn't want to explain because they both knew Maura liked the idea of a curious daughter, had for once not persisted. Maura had called to Neeve's last known address. She'd discovered that Neeve hadn't returned there. Neeve hadn't returned anywhere. And Neeve was a stranger, but she had still been Maura's sister, whatever that connection meant between them. So Blue hadn't wanted to press.

"Well, I'll keep looking for it regardless," Gansey said now. "Maybe a book will tell me." Then, with a sideways look at her, "I'm going to see if I can pick up Adam now. Maybe I should drop you off at home and then we'll pick you up?"

Blue stared at him.

"What would be the point of that?" she said.

This was the secret between them, she thought. This was theirs, and she was the interloper. It made her angry.

"Keep driving," she snapped at him.

"I'd be driving regardless," Gansey murmured. It put him in the right at once. He was hardly going to stop in the middle of this dusty and lonesome backroad. But the sensible rebuttal only made Blue flush and refuse to feel bad. She would not be left out.

"Jane, it's not a nice place out here," was all Gansey said, after a few minutes.

He wasn't wrong. She didn't know how he'd learned this so quickly, about this part of Henrietta. There were two Henriettas. Blue's, where they shopped local, because local meant helping the neighbors. Where they hosted a craft fair in early spring, and cross-church socials open to everyone, even the irreligious and the odd, in late fall. Blue's Henrietta brought to mind phrases like _sense of community_ and _where everybody knows your name_.

This Henrietta, out here, was for the other kind of Henriettan. Blue did not mix with that kind. They were prone to alcoholism and racial slurs.

Now a gaggle of boys in wifebeaters caught sight of the Camaro. They were playing in the bowels of another car, parked haphazardly across one side of the road. Its paint was flaking off and someone had graffitied indecipherable letters onto its side. The children pushed off of it, shouting, and threw clods of earth at the Camaro. Gansey frowned, pressed his foot to the accelerator. 

"Sorry," he said now. "You probably know this area better than I do, anyway."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Well, you're from here."

"I'm not from _here_."

"Well, are you comfortable here or not?" Gansey asked. His tone was very even and reasonable. "I did offer to drive you home."

"Just pick Adam up," she snapped.

She'd known from what he'd said before that Adam was one of these Henriettans, which was why Adam had so surprised her. 

Now they came to a dusty pocket, trying and failing to pass itself off as a cul-de-sac. Here and there the residents had worn new roads between the houses into the dirt. Gansey pulled up in front of a light blue double-wide. 

"If you'd like to stay in the car--" he began.

Blue opened the door and stepped out. She was glad she was wearing her strongest boots. The ground here was tacky mud, letting out a septic smell. Blue stepped forward. Gansey called her name, but she didn't listen. This kind of Henriettan was not her kind of Henriettan, but Blue still knew the mores and customs. She walked to the cement steps and knocked politely on the door. She could hear a television set blaring from the inside. She could hear someone shouting. She could hear the words, "-- _mean you took Sunday off?_ "

Whoever was saying those words had a Henrietta-thick accent, but not an accent that reminded her of summer. She stepped back. She nearly tumbled off the step and into the mud, but Gansey was there and for a moment all she saw was powerful arms, the shadow of his lashes, the hard set to his mouth.

He helped her right herself.

"I've been wondering whether to ask him again if he would--"

He broke off. Whoever was shouting in the house was shouting louder now, rage mingled with profanity. Blue remembered how upset Gansey had been one night at Nino's, and how soon after that he'd come to Fox Way to ask for a reading. Not for himself. For Adam.

"He won't leave," she guessed. 

How could he? And it made a depressing kind of sense. It fit with the vague things one of her school counselors had talked about, ticked off of a list of topics during a mandatory check-in with the girls in her grade. 

Gansey closed his eyes. His jaw shifted. He said, "I suppose it takes strength to stay in a place like this."

He didn't say it like he believed it. He said it like a politician conceding a technical point to an opponent, just before sweeping in with the grand rebuttal. He passed a hand through his chestnut hair and added, "He told me once that he preferred I stay in the car when it was like this. Stay in the car and leave if he couldn't make it out."

There was something very heedless about his eyes. 

"How can I _leave_?" he demanded. His old Virginia voice was thick with something unnameable. Rage. And fear. He was not supposed to feel fear, this striding, lordly boy. But he did. He said, "Jane, when it's like this, I don't know what to do."

Blue made a split second decision. She pulled him by the arm, looking about to make sure no one was watching them. No one was. At this hour it was hot inside and out, and thankfully the people here had opted to stay inside where it was hot without insects. She could hear more television sets from the surrounding double-wides. Good. She'd walked dogs for some people out in Winterborn Mobile Homes once. That was a nicer trailer park, but the floor plans had to be mostly the same. Living room and kitchen in the front, bathrooms in the middle, bedrooms at the back. She headed for the back. 

There was a carport there and a dejected kind of dog in the carport, going out of its mind with growling rage. She slipped off a bracelet she had -- rubber and twine and all kinds of chewable things -- and threw it, hoping it would calm the thing. It did, briefly. The dog snapped at the bracelet instead of at her or Gansey. This kept it momentarily occupied, but it soon reared up again.

Without explanation but with a lordly kind of determination, Gansey knelt down and reached out an arm. Blue had a horrible vision of fangs sinking into him. But he rubbed its ears, focused, and the dog seemed to calm and melt with the attention. 

Blue exhaled hard. She hadn't even known she'd been holding a breath.

She found the house's back windows. She had to stand on tiptoes to reach, to lick her fingertips and balance them on the glass. Then she pushed the window up to get a better look. When she peered inside, it was a bedroom. She could make out a mattress on a box spring, large men's work shirts hanging in the closet. Too broad for Adam. She tried at the next window. This room was smaller and there was too much in it. A twin bed, a cheap white table with an old radio, school books, an overflowing trash can, an ancient and battered laptop. Shoeboxes and cereal boxes under the bed and stacked against the walls. Adam's clothing was all over the floor, camo pants and t-shirts and stained coveralls. Only his school sweater was hung properly in the narrow alcove that passed for a closet.

"This is it," she whispered to Gansey.

"This is his _room_?"

Blue raised an eyebrow at him. Belatedly, Gansey seemed to remember that he lived in his car, and some of the noble horror left his face.

"Want to go in?" she told him.

" _Jane_."

"Fine. Then I will. You're too broad anyway. Keep the dog quiet."

She planned to climb in, move back the cheap blinds, and pick her way to the closet. But before she could manage it, Adam and a woman came into the room. She and Gansey ducked as one, sliding down in the dirt underneath the window. Gansey held the dog close and rubbed its ears with renewed fervor, clearly hoping to keep it quiet.

The woman was obviously Adam's mother. Blue had seen her for a only second, but she'd seen that the woman had Adam's eyes, blue and striking. Her serious face was Adam's too. Even her voice was like Adam's as it came through the open window.

"Adam, you can't expect respect from people if you don't respect them." 

She sounded very reasonable. Adam didn't answer right away.

"Don't you think?" she prompted. 

"It's gonna leave another bruise," Adam said, after a few seconds.

"Well, don't you think that sometimes bruises are lessons?" the woman said. 

Next to her, Gansey jerked his chin violently at the sill. It made the dog yelp, startled and unhappy. They heard the woman's footsteps coming closer. Blue flattened herself below the sill, breathing heavily. Gansey, who was too broad to manage this successfully, ducked out to the side, leading the dog by one hand to the carport. He'd just vanished behind a blue pickup when Blue saw the shadow of the woman at the window, heard her say, "McLaren's dog again." 

She shut the window, and after that, it was harder to hear what was going on inside. Adam said something, but it was muffled. His mother said something that sounded like, "Nobody in this house wants to fight," and then, just after that, "instead of complaining, don't you think you should try harder not to start these things?"

Blue felt something sick and unhappy hook into her heart.

She heard Adam's mother step away and then the distant closing of a door. She found herself standing and reaching for the window again, scrambling to press her fingers against the glass. But then Gansey's arm touched her and directed her back. When she turned, he was standing pressed against the side of the trailer, still holding the dog.

"Is she gone?" he said. "My god -- I. She thinks they deserve it."

Blue blinked at him.

"They?"

"His mother," Gansey said, waving the hand that was not holding tight to a clump of ragged, low-whining dog. "He gets hit. She gets hit. Jane, with the way people around here live--"

More purposeful, regal waving. At the dusty trailer, the ugly carport, the uglier dog.

"--I don't think they've ever been taught how to treat themselves or eachother--"

"I think you're complicating it," Blue said.

The sickness in her was building, developing jagged edges. The way he said _people around here_ made her unsure. He was not classing her with them. Right? And how horrible it was, to think that she preferred it that way. She thought he was wrong about Adam's mother, but she liked the way he appealed to her, a politician again. 

Not people like you and I, but _these people_.

So much of her agreed with him, so much of her wanted to agree, and then she thought of the normal way Adam's mother had said: don't you think sometimes bruises are lessons? And she became strangely angry with herself.

"I don't think you know enough about this to talk about it," she snapped. 

Gansey's voice dropped to a dangerous level of calm.

"Are you defending this?" he asked. More waving. At the trailer. _This_ meant the trailer. Or the poverty or the abuse or -- or whatever else it was he couldn't understand. She couldn't, either. That made it worse when he began to look both convinced and impossibly handsome, and said, "Maybe this seems normal for you, but that doesn't make it right--"

"Normal for _me_?" She could hear her voice rising and she didn't care. The dog whined louder in answer. Someone would hear them soon, Adam's mother or father or a neighbor. And so much of her was upset now that she didn't care, and she couldn't stop, and she felt sick. 

"I don't know why you're getting angry at me," Gansey said, still calm. "Or why you're defending--"

"I'm not _defending_ \--"

"Hey," came Adam's voice, tired and Henrietta-soaked. "Shut up. Please. Both of you."

He was leaning out of his window and refusing to look at them. It didn't make a difference. There were new bruises along his jaw and neck, the kind that would be getting worse soon.

"Why'd you bring her?" he asked Gansey tightly.

Blue could feel her mouth curling. A little voice told her now that it was nothing, and even if it was something, then what Adam faced was bigger. But a greater voice inside her howled. _Why'd you bring her?_ There were a million cruel things Blue could say in response, but she didn't want to be cruel, she wanted to be real. Only when she found her voice, even she could tell it was too-high, unreasonable.

"He wanted to leave me at home," she reported, ruthless without meaning to be. "But then he thought, you know, that I would get it. He thought that people like _us_ would just automatically get it."

Adam flinched. Abruptly, Blue felt horrible. Next to her, Gansey almost dropped the dog.

"Jane," he said, voice low and unhappy. "That is not what I meant."

"That's what you said," she insisted. 

And then, because she really didn't want to bring Adam's parents on his head, because she didn't want to be the cause of something like that for Adam -- even if he never had invited her to fix a car -- she found herself walking away. 

"I'll wait in the car," she told them bitterly, before she left. Bitter. She was bitter; that was it. She didn't want to be bitter, and yet this whole time she had been. Over what? Gansey and Adam should be free to misunderstand each other. They didn't need Blue Sargent for that, and if that was the way it was going to be, then there was no point feeling bitter about it. 

She'd thought, briefly, that there was the potential for more here. The potential for something true. But that was the trouble with potential: it never actually worked out. People told Blue she had marvelous potential all the time, and yet she never seemed to fulfill it. She amplified the potential of others. Now, she felt as though she'd amplified something she shouldn't have, something ugly and cruel. She climbed into the backseat of the Camaro and drew up her knees, tried to close the car door behind her.

The dog's wet nose intruded.

Blue stared at it. It stared at Blue. Now it wasn't barking and furious, but full of ragged entreaty. Blue took its face in her hands and rubbed its ears the way she'd seen Gansey do. The dog scrabbled anxiously into the Camaro, then pressed its dirty coat against her. Blue let it, not caring how it tracked mud on her skirt. She was good with dogs; she had a job walking them after school. But this one seemed to need more than a walk. It went wild with joy as soon as she touched it.

"She can't come with us," someone said softly. Adam. He'd come up so quietly that she hadn't even noticed him, and now he bent forward and picked up the dog. It buried its snout in his bruised neck. He winced, but let this happen.

"Snuck out?" Blue said. It unnerved her that she hadn't heard him, though he must have followed after her right away.

"Climbed out the window," he said. 

"Why can't she come with us?" Blue asked, mostly to keep from mentioning the obvious, which was what would happen to him if his parents found out he was out here now.

"Her owner doesn't like her straying," was all Adam said, shaking his head. He moved away with the dog, presumably to deposit her where she belonged, and now Gansey came around the other side to open the drivers' side door. He climbed in without saying anything. Blue didn't say anything in turn. She picked at the least-muddy corner of her skirt and felt her eyes go hot. She didn't want to cry. It was stupid. Gansey was something so firm-voiced and presidential that it made no sense. It wouldn't have worked out anyway. It wouldn't have been right if it had. She'd seen him on the corpse road.

"That is not what I meant, Jane," he said now, again.

"That's what you _said_ ," said Blue, though she knew that wasn't the problem. Now tears were coming in earnest. 

Silence.

Then, evenly, "Jane, I don't understand your reaction to it either."

"Then maybe you really shouldn't have brought me!" Blue said. It was clear that Adam didn't want her here. He came up along the side of the car now and climbed into the front seat. Blue looked away and out of the window to avoid staring at them sitting there next to each other. The dog had been tied up to a post outside the double-wide next door. It was gnawing at the rope, betrayed and furious.

"Are we doing this?" Adam said now.

Gansey sighed.

"Maybe we shouldn't. Clearly we all need a break."

Neither of them called on her for her opinion, which was somehow the worst thing.

"So this was all for nothing?" she said incredulously. 

Gansey said, voice fixed and unshaken, "Jane, this _was_ nothing. We've accomplished nothing and we're all tired."

"I'm not tired!"

"I am not raising my voice at you," Gansey said quietly.

Blue didn't know which emotion was more powerful -- her fury or her sadness. She knew she must sound hysterical to them, and that made it worse. But then Adam said, slowly, "I'm not tired."

Gansey shifted in the drivers' seat to look at him. Blue shifted too, out of surprise.

"I already snuck out," Adam muttered. "You had a plan, Gansey. Let's just--"

A wrinkle marred Gansey's forehead. "I don't think that's a good idea."

"But I do and Blue does," Adam said. "And in two minutes my dad'll notice you're out here. So is that going to be for nothing?"

Impossibly, Gansey started the car.

"This is a bad idea," he informed them crisply. 

But, somehow still lordly about it, powerful about it, he started the car anyway. It tore off down the dirt road with sudden, unpredictable force, loud and furious. The answering silence in the car proved his point -- none of them was up for this now. Blue wanted to desperately to catch Adam's eye, but Adam seemed to want desperately to look at his hands, pick at his long sleeves.

After the first few miles, Gansey switched on the radio. He fiddled with the dials. Blue thought he would settle on something insufferable, but he flipped to a perfectly normal classic rock station and then let it alone. The sounds of the Electric Light Orchestra poured into the Camaro.

Adam was the first to crack.

"Sorry," he told his hands. Or no one in particular. Or possibly both of them.

But then he added quietly, "It's fine that you brought her," so maybe he was speaking to Gansey. Blue bristled.

"Oh, it's fine, is it!"

Gansey said, "He's apologized. I don't see why you're continuing to make an issue of i--" but Adam turned in his seat to face her. He gestured at his bruised face.

"There's no point hiding it," he said. "You'd know eventually."

Blue bit her tongue.

"Did you hear?" Adam asked her. Blue nodded. Something in his face changed. Blue couldn't tell if he was furious. She didn't like that. It made his normal terseness seem somehow unpredictable.

"Alright," he said, turning back around and settling in. "So now you know."

His voice was grim. 

"If it's not really fine, don't tell me it's fine!"

Gansey took a hand off the steering wheel to push up his glasses, rub the bridge of his nose.

"Jane, you're making a mountain out of a molehill--"

"She's not," Adam said. He was back to examining his hands. "Fifth grade, I had a friend who came by, met them. Never talked to me again. I didn't do anything to him. It was just -- too much."

Gansey and Blue again stared at him.

"It's alright that it was too much," he added defensively. "I don't expect people to--"

"It's not alright," Blue said at once. Or Gansey did. They both did. Now their eyes met in the rearview. Gansey's snapped back to the road after half a second, but he said, "Parrish, it's not alright."

"I'm sorry too," Blue said. She was. She was sorry for arguing so loudly where his parents could have heard, and she was sorry to have heard his mother, and she was sorriest for that moment she'd wanted Gansey to mean _these people_ , but not her. It was like some cruel joke, the way Blue knew in her bones that Adam's people were not her people, but then could still hate when Adam in his boyness excluded her.

"We're all sorry," Gansey said, after a minute. It was a final, strong kind of statement. Blue didn't want to feel better to hear it, but she did feel better. 

Still, she thought she should say something.

"We're not going to do that," she told Adam. "Not talking to you again. We won't do that."

Again she met Gansey in the rearview. His strong jaw dipped. A nod. He looked relieved. Blue found it hard not to forgive him, a little.

"Where are we going?" she said, leaning forward between the two front seats. 

Gansey tapped some papers on the handrest. She unfolded them. They began as physics notes and rapidly devolved into notes on the ley line. Blue blinked at them, surprised. Gansey's handwriting was businesslike but more disorganized than she expected. Some of his notes were so scattered and private-seeming that they felt not at all suited to the rest of him.

"The line -- I think that says line -- possibly tries Tiglestup Ripple," she read.

"The line passes through Tiwissock Ridge," Gansey corrected. 

"Toesock?" Adam said.

"Tiwissock," corrected Gansey.

Adam's turn to meet Blue's gaze. Not in the mirror. Directly, by craning around to look at her, and then craning further to get a look at the paper. Between his scattered notes, Gansey had painstakingly, carefully copied out a fair map of the countryside between Henrietta and Springer Falls. Adam put one long finger on the part of the map that Blue still thought read Tiglestup Ripple.

"What's right there?" he asked her.

"Toesock Ridge," Blue said truthfully. As far as she knew, that spot had always been called Toesock Ridge. 

"The ley line," Gansey said severely, "Couldn't possibly pass through a place called Toesock Ridge. That wouldn't be obliging of it."

Adam shrugged. "Guess it's not obliging. I always called that Toesock Ridge. And this isn't the right way to it."

"This is the route I found in the books--"

Adam said wryly, "The same books that don't know it's called Toesock--"

" _Tiwissock_."

"Adam's right," Blue announced. "This is the oldest route, maybe. But these are backroads. It'll take an extra hour going this way. If you want get to Toesock Ridge fast, you have to take the turnpike and cut up along this side of the mountain."

"The turnpike!" was all Gansey said, looking momentarily baffled, like he'd forgotten that there were things like turnpikes in the world. "Alright. Let's do that. Can we afford it?"

Hurriedly, they searched their pockets for enough to make the toll at the next turn. They managed to split it about evenly, though first Gansey insisted on paying it all and was shouted down by both herself and Adam. He settled for running a hand through his hair and saying, with a superior kind of irritation, " _Toesock Ridge_."

"It doesn't show up on maps because it's not really a ridge," Adam explained.

"It's just a makeout spot on the mountain," Blue said. It had been Orla's favorite spot in the area for roughly the last decade.

"A makeout spot!" Gansey said. His superior irritation became true affront. "On the ley line?"

"What do those books say about the ley line?" Blue asked curiously. "That you can't make out on it?"

"What don't they say about the ley line," Adam said, rolling his eyes, "the way Gansey talks about it."

"They do not say that the line has any cute little names on it like Toesock Ridge," Gansey said. 

Now the car pulled up to the tollboth. Gansey counted out their hard-earned payment and the attendant waved them through, eyeing Blue's head, thrust up between the two front seats. For safety concerns, and also to avoid being pulled over and having to pay a ticket they now definitely couldn't afford, Blue settled again in the back and pulled on her seatbelt. But before she did, she made sure to say, "Right, no. That's your important ley line studying. We can't have it be _cute_."

She watched, satisfied, as Gansey's eyebrows climbed up in the rearview. Adam turned around in his seat again and pointed at him, then mouthed, very clearly,

_Cute is him when he's knocked out over those books._

Blue laughed outright. Gansey said, "I don't know what you said, but don't think I didn't see you do it."

But that was enough. The horrible events of that afternoon had lost their power. They were easier with eachother now, kinder, as they roared down the turnpike. They were masters of the countryside. Gansey explained what he'd found in his books, and his excitement gave his wonderful voice more power. Adam joked wryly about Toesock Ridge. Blue abandoned safety and leaned between them, no longer feeling so left out, feeling capable now of peppering them with questions about their job at Boyd's, about what they actually did there.

"Do you want to learn about cars?" Gansey asked incredulously. Not incredulous like he thought the idea was stupid. Only a boyish, regal, innocent kind of incredulous: a visiting prince learning new social customs.

Blue had to gather herself before she could nod.

"It isn't hard," Adam said. "I could teach you. If Gansey can learn, you can."

"Hey," Gansey said calmly.

So she arrived at Toesock Ridge breathless and happy and satisfied, even though it was only Toesock Ridge. It was a plateau high on the mountain, more chalk and dust than mountain, just big enough for a few cars. The Camaro was the only car there today, though. They got out and poked along in the dust, not sure what they were looking for. Gansey poked with purpose. Adam poked and came up with several beer cans, which he politely stacked to one side, like he was trying to make a point. Blue poked and finally said, "What are we looking for?"

Adam said, "I found a bottle cap."

"I found," Blue said, looking down at the dust by her boots. "It's not a balloon. Let's just say that."

Gansey gave no answer. They both looked at him. He stood out looking over into the valley below, Henrietta cupped by hills. He was holding up his hands and making Ls of them, like a film director.

"Tiwissock Ridge," he said softly.

Adam said, "Toesock--"

"No," Gansey said. 

Then he was somehow arranging them, taking Blue's arm with one hand and Adam's with the other. It would have been upsetting to be manhandled in this way by anyone else, but from Gansey it was mostly just surprising. He was gentle about it, prompting them to move of their own volition until they were standing near where he'd been standing, looking out where he'd been looking.

"Here," he said. "The Ridge."

Blue looked out over the valley, the hills. It was a kind of ridge, maybe. Just not the one he was looking for. She said as much.

"I guess you could say this is part of the Blue Ridge," Adam said, kicking at the dust and sounding unconvinced.

Gansey shook his head. Then, with one arm, he sketched out the first line of hills that defined the boundaries of Henrietta. Then the second line of hills along the town. Then the third and final line of hills. Blue blinked, and then she saw it.

The hills met in a kind of triangle, forming the valley below. Three curving, intersecting lines of hills. A very familiar shape, the shape of magic and ley lines.

"Fuck," Adam said, apparently seeing it too. The word came out of him in a startled, uncharacteristic way. 

Gansey punched one arm into the air. It was a gesture that properly belonged in cheesy sports movies, but Gansey made it seem natural and real. 

"This is not Tiwissock Ridge," he said. He pointed out again at the vista of Henrietta nestled in its curving triangle of hills. "That -- the ley line symbol! That's Tiwissock Ridge!"

He gave a whoop so joyous that it was hard not to grin in answer. He turned to face them, arms spread out, as though presenting the valley to them like a gift. 

"We found it!" he said. "Now, we're taking my path back."

Neither Blue nor Adam saw fit to contest this, since they hardly had enough money to get back on the turnpike. And they didn't want to get back so soon. They were flush with an impossible sense of victory. It made the winding trip down through the older roads exciting. They had found something remarkable, and Blue didn't want the day to end. Adam gave her the front seat now, and they spent the ride back discussing what it all could mean.

She was so caught up in it that she forgot to tell Gansey not to take her home the obvious way, the way that required cutting through the fairgrounds. After Tiwissock Ridge, fairgrounds should have been a concept for another planet. So Gansey did turn onto the fairgrounds. And Blue noticed a second too late. It was Adam, really, who noticed first.

"Fuck," he said again. Now the fuck was grim and belonged to him in its entirety: he meant it. A flashy, angry kind of car with too many vents had slid in to the left of them. An even worse one closed in on the right. Up ahead, the lights of both a BMW and a Mitsubishi came on, blinding them.

"Them?" Gansey said. He didn't sound angry or fearful, just disbelieving. A thin, wraithlike shadow cut in between the lights. It came up to the car on Blue's side. Blue took in a sharp breath. She hated Joseph Kavinsky. She hated the heavy-lidded, expensive, flashy look of him. She hated his entire pack. Lynch was bringing up the rear today, the handsomest and deadliest of his soldiers. 

"A girl?" she heard Lynch say to one of the others, like he didn't think much of that kind of thing. 

Kavinsky let out a wild, screeching laugh.

"Were you fucking a townie, Dick?" He said. He stuck his head in through Blue's window. Blue recoiled.

"Roll up the window and snap his head right off with it," Adam muttered. 

"Shit," Kavinsky said, noticing him now. "Were you _sharing_ a townie?"

Blue heard Lynch start cursing now -- though she could hardly think why -- and it was a fluid, unending sort of thing, more litany than profanity. Gansey said, voice perfectly pleasant, "Adam, I think that was a good idea, but this one's better." Then, with a quick, strong motion, he grabbed something beneath his seat, popped the cap off, and sprayed it at Kavinsky's mouth. He made it look like he was frightening off a misbehaving dog.

Kavinsky screamed. 

"Fuck! What the fuck?"

Gansey examined the bottle he was holding. 

"It's some kind of solvent," he reported calmly. "I hope it's not toxic. It doesn't seem to have a label. Lynch can tell us more, probably. Jane, would you like the solvent?"

Blue stared. Kavinsky was still cursing and holding his mouth, gagging and spitting violently. His cronies were gathered around him as though unsure. All except for Lynch. Lynch was staring at her with a peculiar snarling expression. Blue felt a sudden streak of hatred for him. She reserved her worst ire for Kavinsky, but the rest of them were no better, and Lynch was possibly worse and even more hateful -- he was a soldier in a war where the enemy was everyone else.

"I'd love the solvent," she said. She took it in hand and directed it at Lynch. "Move your car," she said.

He didn't move it. He looked at her crookedly, staring down the bottle of solvent like he didn't really think it could hurt him. Blue had the fast, uneasy thought that maybe he knew something she didn't, or maybe she would have to spray him with something that clearly burned a lot, or maybe she didn't even have it in her to do that.

"Let me," Adam said suddenly. Blue thought he would take the bottle of solvent, but instead he reached for everything else, leaning over the handrest and gathering up a bag that Gansey pulled out from below his seat. Adam climbed out the car and walked straight to Lynch, shoving the bag at him and then letting it drop out of his hands. Impossibly, Lynch moved to catch it.

"Move your car," Adam said.

Kavinsky chose this moment to stand up, still pulling faces because of the solvent.

"You didn't have to do that, Dick!" He said. "You shouldn't have done that! Me and you -- we could have gotten along. I was starting to like you. You're fucking entropy in action, Dick, that's why!" 

His gang ranged around him, all except for Lynch. Lynch was still holding the bag and staring at Adam in surprise.

"Adam," Gansey said warningly. "Get in the car."

Instead, Adam stepped closer to Lynch. Lynch looked him over, disbelieving. The stark light of the headlights made Adam's bruises stand out mottled and ugly.

"Move. Your. Car," Adam said. 

Lynch turned and walked back to the BMW. After a moment, they heard it give a roar and saw it back away, giving them room to pass. Blue felt her mouth drop open. Adam got back in the car. Gansey stepped on the pedal.

"What the _fuck_?" Kavinsky screeched again. But now he was drowned out by the roar of the Camaro.


	5. Chapter 5

Crew season ended and then exam season was upon them. Gansey had never cared less about it, though he'd never cared very much. Richard Campbell Gansey II had been strict about grades, promising to cut his son off if his grades ever fell too low. But the threat had held little weight. Gansey had never made less than a B+ in his life. He'd always found school easy, the teachers pliable, the demands mostly congenial.

It was harder now. It was harder to study when he was tired from work. It was harder to study when his thoughts crept close to his mother, father, and Helen. It was harder to study when out there, beyond the notes and textbooks and flashcards, the ley line waited, Tiwissock Ridge waited.

"What language does it sound like to you?" Gansey asked Adam one morning as they studied together during a break at Boyd's. The sunrise was dawning pink and majestic over the ugly, industrial street. Gansey shielded his eyes to better marvel at it and added, "Do you think it sounds Native American?"

"Three essays," Adam replied. He was holding a book in one hand. With his other hand he frantically scribbled the answer to some question he'd pulled from a past exam that had been archived in the school library.

"Yes," Gansey told him politely. "I'm beginning to think it's not. I looked up everything I could find on the Manahoac, the Powhatan, the Occaneechi, the Cherokee--"

"Our exam tomorrow is going to be three in-class essays," Adam said. "In two hours, Gansey."

"Yes, I know. I was there when Milo said it. I'm in your class," Gansey pointed out.

He just didn't see the point of practicing with the old essay questions, because Milo would not repeat a question. Perhaps it made sense for Adam to put this much effort into it; Adam needed a way out of the trailer park, and Aglionby was an honest and admirable way to accomplish that. But Gansey didn't think he could exit his own life in a similar fashion. He couldn't seem to envision what that was, to put so much on the line just for Aglionby. And anyway, whatever happened to Gansey was to be determined by what Maitland could do.

He'd called Gansey again about the offer -- half-apologetic, half-concerned for what might happen if Gansey did not take it. His concern was unnecessary. There was no universe in which Gansey would be taking that offer. 

Now Adam stopped writing, put his work in his bag, and sighed.

"I think we have to ask Blue's mother again," he said. "She's from here. She's psychic. And she's drawn that symbol before. If it's just the symbol of the ley line and copied from hills around the town or something, then she can tell us that."

Sound reasoning, which was typical of Adam. Gansey looked at him thoughtfully. The hollows beneath his eyes were deeper with studying, and his bruises were beginning to fade. Beneath that he remained serious and elegant, all fine bones smudged with grease. It was rude to touch people unbidden, so Gansey did not put a finger to the worst of the grease stains to rub it away. They only stayed shoulder-to-shoulder until it was time to head back in to work. Brake pads again today. Gansey was becoming the king of brake pads. He suspected that this was because it was one of the easier jobs. Adam swept in for the bad ones, and Boyd allowed this because, in his words, Gansey was "already learning so much."

Maybe. He could work now on automatic, letting his mind wander again. Did Blue's mother draw the symbol because she was psychic and connected to the ley line, or because it was a local symbol? Would other people from Henrietta be familiar with it? Why wasn't Adam, then? Or Blue herself? Why did this part of the ley line have its own symbol, and its own flock of synchronized ravens to scratch it in the dirt? The town of Henrietta was not supposed to be remarkable. Like its waitresses, like its scholarship boy mechanics, it was not supposed to be remarkable and yet it was. 

He was still thinking about this as he and Adam pulled on their school uniforms and headed to Aglionby for their Latin exam. This one would come straight out of the book because the school had not yet replaced Whelk. Gansey wasn't worried about it, though Adam flipped through his workbook one last time and scraped the edges of his pencil with his teeth. 

"You'll be fine," Gansey told him. "Aren't you the best in the class?"

"No," Adam said, "Not in Latin. You'll never guess who is."

"Alright," Gansey said. He was fine with never guessing. Tiwissock and the ley line made for better mysteries than the mystery of Aglionby's current Latin prodigy. 

But Adam continued, with no small amount of bitterness, "The last person you would think."

"Tad."

"What? No."

"That's the last person I would think. I know for a fact his grades are awful."

"It's Lynch."

Now Gansey was interested. 

"I knew he was smarter than he looked," And he knew that Lynch had tried to help them. And he knew that Lynch knew Adam, though Adam did not seem interested in knowing Lynch. And he knew that when Adam had asked, Lynch had moved his car. 

It made for a strange, private conclusion that Gansey suspected it was not his business to conclude. 

But when they reached the exam room, Lynch wasn't there. He wasn't there when Pinter handed out the blue books. He wasn't there when they began. He wasn't there an hour in, when Adam put his pencil down and flipped back through his book, the first to finish. He turned his exam in and when he passed Gansey's desk on the way out, Gansey dropped the keys to the Camaro in his palm. Adam knew by now to wait in the car for him. He had work at the trailer factory this afternoon, and it would save time to have Gansey drive him there. Gansey was pleased that Adam had come to see the utility of this, had come to accept his help in this way. That victory had been hard-won. 

He finished his own text and turned it in, then headed to the athletic center for a fast shower. He would be going to Fox Way after he dropped Adam off, and wanted to present his best self there. It seemed impolite to appear and demand answers to the ley line while smelling of car exhaust. He considered dropping by the Camaro and bringing Adam along, but Adam wouldn't see the use in cleaning himself off before the factory, where he'd only get dirty anyway. And Adam didn't like using the school showers. Adam didn't like doing anything that required changing in front of other people. It was hot and muggy out this week, Virginia spring giving way to the unbearable assault of early summer, and yet Adam still wore long sleeves. 

After the shower, Gansey found him curled up in the backseat with his eyes closed. Gansey climbed in without waking him and rolled down the windows. Adam had stripped off his school sweater, but beneath his ragged button-down he was still wearing his work clothes, and Gansey didn't know how he wasn't melting. 

"Are you going to see Blue?" Noah asked softly. "Can I come?"

Gansey jerked around to face him. Noah was standing there, looking at nothing in particular.

"What exam did you have today?" Gansey asked, popping a door open for him. 

"None," Noah said. He climbed in and draped himself over both the front seat and Adam's books, less a boy than the graceless, lanky film of a boy. Gansey put the key in the ignition and pulled out of the parking lot, turning onto the drive.

"What do you know about Ronan Lynch?" he asked Noah as they took the turnoff back to the industrial zone. It puzzled him, the fact that Lynch had not shown for the Latin exam. Maybe Adam was wrong about Lynch being best in the class. 

"I only know things I think nobody else does," Noah said. 

"You're friends with him?" 

Noah. Lynch. What strange combinations this world had in it. 

"Adam's always known a lot about you and you weren't friends with him." 

"Adam's always known a lot about me?" 

Gansey wasn't surprised about it generally, because generally people noticed a Gansey. He was surprised about it personally. He'd never bothered to realize that Adam must have been like everyone else once. Outside the Gansey orbit, looking in at him. He didn't know if he liked that.

Noah sighed.

"I shouldn't tell people's secrets," he said, after a minute. He began to rub at the smudge on his face. Gansey stared at this and wondered if he should tell Noah to stop. It was a peculiar and disturbing sort of action; it didn't make the smudge any better. Of course, it also didn't make it worse. Noah's smudge seemed to be a very permanent kind of imprint.

Maybe, Gansey reflected, he should be firmer with the both of them about regular showers at the athletic center. _Teenage_ didn't have to mean _dirty_.

But by now they'd reached the factory, so he turned around to wake Adam. Adam slid into wakefulness like there was little difference between that and sleep, resigned about it, his eyes still so hollowed. For a moment, Gansey wanted to ask him to reconsider operating heavy machinery today. But he bit his tongue. This was one more in a long list of things he'd learned to bite his tongue about, around Adam. This fight had brought them no victories.

Now Adam went to get his bike from the trunk, then moved to gather up his schoolbooks. Gansey stopped him.

"Leave it, Parrish," he said. "You're not going to study tonight. You're here until nearly midnight and you have the demo yard in the morning. I'll bring your books by then, but tonight what you need is sleep."

"I can carry my own books--"

"I know you can. But tonight you won't," Gansey said smoothly, starting the car again. 

He tried not to see Adam's enraged expression in the mirror as he pulled away. Adam had the trailer factory again tomorrow after their English exam, and two nights without sleep would only be asking for an industrial accident. So he refused to feel bad about it. It was better not to feel bad. He didn't want to reach Fox Way in a bad temper. In short time, the house had become a comforting, wistful place to be, perhaps because Gansey had no home of his own now. He didn't miss the D.C. house -- Helen, yes; his parents, yes; but the carefully curated welcome of their home, no. But Fox Way made him miss something, even if he didn't know what it was. The women of the house were all solid believers in things. Not believers the way his parents had been believers, in good humor and good manners, in rising above bad behavior and giving to charity. But believers for the sake of belief itself, committed to their cards and their scrying bowls, their frankly terrible tea and their death predictions via telephone.

Now the pale one, Persephone, opened the door for them. She didn't seem surprised to see them, but she did seem surprised. She always seemed a bit surprised. 

"I hope I'm not startling you," Gansey began.

"No," she said, sighing. She gestured at the empty space next to Gansey, the side Noah was not on. "I wanted to read his palm."

"His palm?" Gansey echoed. He looked around for this _his_.

"The other one," Persephone said. She retreated and Gansey followed her in, this pale beacon.

"Palm lines are like ley lines. It's all just a path for our energy," she told Gansey. She led him to the same overstuffed room they used for readings. 

"Jane told you about my interest in the ley line?" 

"It's not nice to rename people," she chided him gently. "It's a misuse of power. Then you don't know when you need their real names. I'll go get her."

Bedecked in these nonsequitors, she vanished into the hall. Gansey blinked after her, assuming she meant Blue. But it was Blue's mother who appeared, barefoot and comfortable-looking, a more casual, cutting version of her daughter.

"You want to know about the ley line," she told Gansey. "And this."

She took a pen abandoned on a side table. The kind that had four kinds of tabs for four different colors of ink. She selected the green and then drew the ley line symbol out for Gansey on a notepad.

"You're a very good psychic," Gansey said politely.

"I'm also a very good guesser," said Maura Sargent. "Blue came home -- at one a.m., thanks for that, the neighbors think I'm an _awful_ mother, not that they thought I was great before -- and wouldn't stop asking about it. She can tell you what I told her if she wants. When she gets home, anyway."

"Is she working?" Gansey asked.

"She's taking a test," Maura said. "Aglionby isn't the only school in this town."

Of course. The local schools would have exams, too. As Gansey and Noah settled in to wait, he wondered what Blue's test was about. He hoped it was something more useful than Latin. He hoped it was something she was very good at. He couldn't see someone as inquisitive and bright as Blue being bad at school. Gansey knew she amplified energy in some way, or at least she claimed she did, but he hardly thought that was it. She embodied energy. Without knowing it, she gave Gansey the same delight he encountered when he thought of kiwi birds or the iced flowers on top of cakes. With Blue around, wonder collided with the real.

But she was clearly not feeling wonder when she finally arrived. Gansey and Noah, playing Chinese checkers and somehow both losing at it, heard her stomp in, say, "Hi. Where's Adam?" and then angrily stomp up the stairs away from them. When she returned, Gansey said carefully, "Hello, Jane. How was your test?" 

"I don't want to talk about that," she said. "My mother told me about this." She picked up the same pen and notepad her mother had and even selected the same color, then stared angrily at the pad as though it had bested her by already having the symbol on it.

"Okay," she decided. "Let's go. I'll tell you about it on the way."

Gansey and Noah obliged her. She told Gansey to get onto the main highway. It was late by now, the sky darkening, and he was running into unexpected traffic on every other road he took. Henrietta was not a big town, but with all of Henrietta returning home for the day at the same time, its few roads became impossibly congested.

"That symbol is the three main ley lines. She never connected it to the town before. It's something my dad taught her," Blue told Gansey now.

She said _my dad_ without any significance, which struck Gansey as very significant.

"Is he from Henrietta? Do you see him a lot?" he asked. He'd never met Blue's father. He assumed he didn't live at Fox Way. Actually, he assumed that men in general didn't live at Fox Way. Fox Way didn't seem to have any use for them.

"I've never met him," Blue clarified.

"Jane. I'm sorry."

Blue shrugged. Noah reached out a pale hand and patted her.

"Seriously," Blue said, rolling her eyes. "He's irrelevant."

"He's your father," Gansey insisted.

"And that's a Buick," Blue said, pointing out at the six-o-clock traffic jam. "And that's a Honda. And that's a road sign."

"That's the speed limit," Noah said.

"Exactly," said Blue. "It just...is. And it's not exactly scintillating conversation, or even really something I care about."

"He probably knew about the ley line," Gansey said. "That's not scintillating?"

"That's interesting," Blue said. "But he's not. He's just somebody who thought the symbol had power. Like something to ward off the evil eye. He drew it enough that my mom mostly believes in it and thinks it's effective, like a rune."

"Where did he first draw it?" Gansey interrupted. "Somewhere on the line?"

"I'm getting to that. He wanted some place to pray, and so my mother took him to a church in town. He said it was sacred to others, so he could make it sacred to him. Then he carved the symbol into a pew, then they got kicked out by the priest."

"He defaced a church?" Gansey asked. "What kind of person defaces a church?"

Blue shrugged again. She really didn't seem interested in playing guessing games about her father. Gansey thought again of the effortless, loving bond she had with her mother, and again he missed. He and his own mother had had an altogether more dignified, formal kind of love. Had he been a bad son in that way? There was no way to tell. There wouldn't have been a way to tell even while she'd lived. Ganseys loved each other courteously, appreciatively. Love that politely refused to acknowledge any real flaws.

He pulled himself back from this train of thought. Traffic was still crawling and Blue had pulled out some yarn and begun to knit something mango-colored and extremely lumpy. Noah had taken some other yarn she had and was playing cat's cradle with it, or maybe just knotting together his own fingers. 

It struck Gansey as odd that they weren't talking. They usually didn't need him to make conversation. Were they fighting? He disliked that. He did not want that from them. He did not know how to fix it.

Because traffic was so bad, he took the next turn despite Blue's protests and brought them to a fast food place. Noah had no money, so he and Blue split the costs, and as they sat down to dinner he regaled them with stories of the crew team: Tad's constant trouble feathering, Win's fight last spring with the St. Alban's coxswain. It was less painful than he'd thought it would be. After fighting for weeks to keep his place among the team, he'd thought he would miss the them more than this, but now he found that Blue and Noah -- even a Blue and Noah who were fighting -- were enough.

But this diversion meant that it was dark when they finally got to the church, a pleasant building with a newly-remodeled spire and a sprightly statue of Mary on the lawn. Or perhaps not Mary. The sign said St. Agnes.

"They're probably closed," Gansey said, frowning. But the church doors were open. They let themselves into a gloomy, vast space lit with flickering candles, everything inside foreign and sacred and smelling of incense.

"She said it was a pew near the front," Blue whispered. Gansey understand the impulse to whisper. He was only ever religious at summer baptisms and weddings, that kind of thing, but this place seemed to call for sanctity at all hours. He had a hard time understanding how anyone could deface it. They walked in silence to the front, down the central aisle. Halfway to the altar, Gansey stepped into something wet. He looked down.

It looked like blood.

It could not be blood.

It was blood.

"Jane," he called sharply. "Noah."

Noah was already backing away, looking worn and yellowed like fading parchment in the candlelight.

"He's at the front," Noah said faintly. "In the first row. Do I have to go? I don't want to see it."

 _See what?_ Gansey thought, but the thought was crowded right out. Noah was right. There was more blood streaked along the floor, up the aisle, leading to the first row. None of the candles there were lit, so the streaks there were black instead of red and the gloom there a complete thing. Gansey moved into it with more speed than he thought himself capable of.

_Who is it, who is it, are they alright--_

It was Ronan Lynch. His eyes were closed, so for a moment Gansey feared the worst and held up a hand to stop Blue and Noah from having to see it. But then Lynch's eyes opened, clear and blue despite the low light. He was cradling his arm and dripping blood into the pew and along the marble floor. He sat up slowly and frowned at it, introspective.

"You need to go to the hospital," Gansey said immediately. It was hard to tell how deep or long the cut on Lynch's arm was. When Gansey helped him up off the pew, he swayed. Gansey smelled alcohol on his breath. He heard Blue gasp.

"Come on," Gansey said. "You have to walk. We have to get you to the hospital."

But Lynch was taller and more violent, and he struggled despite his blood-loss-or-alcohol-induced wooziness, his swears loud in the empty church.

"Noah, help me," Gansey said sharply. He had the strength and Noah had the reach, and maybe that would be enough to subdue Lynch and get him medical attention. But Noah backed away, shaking his head.

"I don't want to see it," he said. His voice flickered loud, then soft. Panic. "Please." 

Blue stepped forward.

"Go get help from someone in the church office," she instructed. Noah went. Gansey was always forgetting how strong she was, but she was able to help keep Lynch upright and propel him into the aisle, towards the door.

Unfortunately, Lynch seemed to have very little concept of self-preservation. He struggled. When Gansey's chest collided with his hurt arm he hissed, blinked past the pain, and punched Gansey in the jaw with the other arm. It wasn't a powerful, purposeful hit this time; it was unfocused and all the more vicious for it.

"Hey!" Blue said, enraged.

"Don't," Gansey said. "Leave him. We could make it worse."

Or he would hit her, and this wilder kind of hit hurt. Gansey massaged his jaw and helped Blue maneuver Lynch back into a pew. Lynch settled into it, baleful, still holding his arm.

"How badly are you hurt?" Gansey demanded, because it seemed as though there was little else he could do until Noah came back with assistance.

"Fuck off, Dick," Lynch managed. It lacked his usual vitriol. His words ran together and there was something strangely subdued in his eyes. He jerked his chin at Blue. "Is she your girlfriend?"

Blue made a sound that was pure offense.

"Is this really the time?" Gansey said. He hoped Noah came back soon with someone. But Noah slunk in and said, "There's nobody."

Gansey made a split-second decision.

"Watch him," he told Blue. He retreated a few steps and pulled out his phone. With a sinking feeling, he dialed the number Adam had given him for the trailer factory. Someone unfamiliar answered and made him wait a few seconds while they went to get Adam. Adam was tense when he came on. He wasn't supposed to leave his station during his shift. He'd given Gansey the number only for emergencies.

Given the amount of blood on the floor of the church, this felt like an emergency. 

"Can you come?" he asked Adam, after he'd explained the situation. Adam was good at first aid. And somehow Gansey thought Lynch might listen to him.

"They'll dock me," Adam said shortly. "But yeah. I'll come." Then he hung up. Gansey faced Lynch and the church with his ribs crushed tight in his chest. Noah was paler than ever. Blue looked furious and wary and was following the line of blood like a detective. Now Gansey could see that it didn't just lead to the front door but to a side door, too, in a great ugly wash, like something had been dragged through there. Blue tested it, but the door seemed to be locked.

What had Lynch been _doing_? And where were his friends?

Gansey had only about ten minutes to wonder this. There were few cars on the road now and Adam had clearly pedaled fast. His normally colorless cheeks were flushed with red when he came in. Gansey nodded significantly at the pew where Lynch was. 

"Show me your arm," Adam told Lynch. 

Remarkably, Lynch did. Adam looked the bloodstained mess over and then said, "Get me something wet. I need to clean this."

Gansey thought something disinfected would be better, but they did not have disinfected. They had Blue's sweater and some fonts of holy water to dunk it in. Adam bent low over Lynch's arm with this and carefully wiped away the blood. Lynch managed to look at everything but Adam. He was a pale, arrogant king, dramatic in the candlelight. 

Blue threw up her hands in disgust. When Adam handed her back her sweater, she began using it to mop up some of the blood on the floor. Gansey helped her, using a red kind of vestment he'd found shoved in a corner by the altar.

"What did you do here?" he asked Lynch. He thought he knew part of the answer, but not all of it. There were pieces he didn't understand. Lynch turned away, silent, his thin mouth stretched thinner by obstinacy or fury or sheer mystery, perhaps.

"It isn't that deep, but it'll scar," Adam said, after a minute. He'd found Lynch's hoodie and bound the arm with it. 

"If you don't want to get it looked at by anybody better," he told Lynch, "then it's your own fault if it heals wrong."

Lynch gave a horrible, jagged smile.

"How many times have you healed wrong?" he asked Adam. "That your fault?"

" _Lynch_ ," Gansey said. "Keep a civil tongue in your head."

"No," Lynch said plainly.

"Forget it," Adam said, standing. "He's not worth it. I have to get back to work. If they have something that needs doing tonight, I might be able to make up what they'll dock me."

"We'll drive you," Gansey said. Disappointment crested in him. He had pulled Adam away from work and he didn't regret it. He'd had no way of knowing that Lynch's wound wasn't serious. But Adam needed that factory paycheck. Adam's father hadn't noticed the other day when Adam had snuck out to find Tiwissock Ridge with them; evidently, he was calmest and least interested in his son just after he'd painted Adam purple. But he would notice if Adam didn't have enough money to give him this month. If there was one thing Gansey had learned about Robert Parrish, it was that Robert Parrish always noticed money.

Adam was first out of the church, then Noah, then Blue, who shot Gansey an indecipherable look as she left. Gansey lingered, leaning into Lynch's pew.

He thought for a moment. He never would have guessed that Lynch could sit there and let Adam tend to him, stone-faced but uncomplaining. He realized why.

"He doesn't trust you, but you trust him," Gansey said softly. 

Lynch's characteristic rage made him stiffen. Gansey ignored this. He was hoping there was more to Lynch than rage.

"You have good judgment," Gansey told him. "So does he, some of the time. But if he's wrong now, then you should prove it to him."

Lynch's swears rang through the church. Gansey would have offered him a curt reprimand, but found that he couldn't. 

The ley line symbol was carved into Lynch's pew. Then, just below it, a word.

Not _Tiwissock_.

 _Tywysog_.

-

"I don't see what Prince Charles has to do with it," Adam said the next day.

This was what Gansey's Tiwissock meant. It was apparently Welsh for prince.

Adam was too exhausted for princes. In the grimy corner by the Nino's phones, the only prince around was Gansey, and he was the only prince Adam cared about but he had fallen far. He had soap suds on his ear and a bruise around his jaw. Adam was used to bruises, even expected some new ones if he didn't make up the difference in his factory paycheck before his parents demanded he cover the electric bill again. But this bruise -- like any bruise on Gansey -- seemed especially offensive. It looked perverse. Gansey shouldn't bruise. He was Gansey. He was currently wringing out a dirty mop and somehow making it look like an Olympic feat. 

Partly because he was doing it wrong. Adam followed the curve of his arms with his eyes and sighed.

"Like this," he told Gansey, leaning over and separating out sections of the mop to make it easier. "See?"

"Oh," Gansey said. "Thank you. Do you know what I think? It began as Tywysog. Then, over time, it tangled with the local vernacular--"

"Darn that local vernacular," Blue said, snooping in, getting a bucket, and sweeping back out again. Gansey shot her a heart-stopping kind of look.

"--it became Tiwissock. Over the years, more recent years, people begin to shorten it to Toesock. Then, of course, they forget the original purpose of the place and begin to use it for, well. You know."

For someone who could stop hearts with a look, he looked thoroughly disappointed in locals for using his sacred spot to make out with each other. Adam wouldn't have expected it of him. He was certain that Gansey had made out with somebody and probably understood the impulse to do it, mostly just because Gansey was Gansey and could have anyone.

The one he wanted, of course, was Blue Sargent.

It made sense. Before, Adam wouldn't have thought Gansey was capable of having a crush like a normal person. But he was decidedly crushed now, because Blue Sargent was absolutely the kind of girl to crush on. When she smiled in Adam's direction, it felt like a noose drawn tight around his lungs. Since Gansey was one of the only other people who could make Adam feel this way, they made quite a pair. Especially now that Gansey was wilder, less well-groomed, a glorious and roughshod kind of American handsome.

"What do you think?" he asked Adam now.

"I think you should go back to work before your boss finds you," Adam said.

Gansey sighed but went, leaving Adam to finish wringing out the mops and telling himself not to think about Blue and Gansey.

There was no point. Gansey was a fallen prince and Blue a waitress. They shouldn't have fit, but they did. Adam was the one that didn't fit, and it was good that he didn't. Someday he would leave. Soon. One more year, and he would be out. Gansey's attorney hadn't seemed to materialize with his money yet, and Blue had never had any, and so they would be stuck here, but Adam -- and it gave him bitter pleasure to acknowledge this -- Adam would be out. 

They could have each other. He would be in college. 

Though in some ways college still felt impossible. But impossible things happened all the time. Adam had asked Ronan Lynch to move out of their way this week, and Ronan Lynch had listened. This was impossible, and yet it had happened. It had happened even though Ronan Lynch didn't listen to anyone, let alone people like Adam. Though maybe Ronan Lynch just wasn't who Adam thought he was. 

He and Blue and Gansey had discussed this in in the car last night, as a possible explanation for all the blood in that church. But Adam didn't like to complicate things; there were questions you knew the answer to, and questions you could only guess at. Ronan Lynch usually fell into the latter category, but the past eighteen months Adam had thought he could make some pretty good guesses about him.

Obviously not. 

He finished wringing the mop out and balanced it back in its place, then wiped his hands on his tatty jeans. He didn't know if he wanted to find out more about Lynch. Where would it take him? Lynch was all wild bones and straight, snarling teeth. It had felt unreal, tending to his arm, like Adam was charming an attack dog run off its leash, except that Lynch wasn't half as tameable. 

So Adam turned to his physics textbook instead. Physics was the last exam he had left, and the most difficult, so for now he devoted his throughts to linear momentum. Rotational motion. Mass spring systems. He couldn't afford to miss a single question on the exam. He'd missed so much class time this term that his final grade in the course had to be perfect.

"Parrish?" someone said.

For one wild, peculiar moment, he assumed it would be Lynch. It wasn't. A hand clapped him on the shoulder and he jerked up only to find Tad Carruthers standing in front of him, looking bored. Adam felt a flicker of annoyance. There were worse people than Tad, probably, but Tad was still the human equivalent of a Mercedes that took up two parking spaces.

"Captain said to leave these with you," he told Adam, and with no further warning tumbled several heavy, leather-bound books into Adam's lap. Adam's physics notes crumpled beneath their weight. It took a few moments to realize that _Captain_ meant _Gansey_ , and that these books were not from the Aglionby library. They were just books. He looked up at Tad, confused.

"They're not mine," Tad said defensively. "I've never even been to Wales."

"Wales?" Adam said.

"Yeah," Tad said. "He wanted books on Wales."

Then, awkward about it, "Does he have family there? Is he going to go live with them now that he's like -- you know."

Poor. Tad wouldn't say the word. People like Tad usually didn't.

"I don't know about his family," Adam said, to avoiding telling Tad what he did know. "You've known him longer than I have. Did you buy these for him?"

Gansey could never be truly poor. Not with his connections. That was the thing about wealth that went back so many generations. Even without the money, it came through.

Evidently Tad thought the same. "Uh-huh," he said, uninterested. "Look, I know his mom and dad are -- like. But there can't be _nobody_. But he doesn't tell us. He comes to practice, he's the Captain at practice, and that's it. He wouldn't show what's going on with him before, and he definitely won't now. There's no cracking Trey."

He sounded half-admiring. He was right to sound that way. Suddenly Adam became very tired of himself, of his bitter, inexplicable anger over Gansey and Blue and his bitter, inexplicable delight at the thought of leaving them here in Henrietta. This was part of the difference between him and Gansey. Gansey didn't show his pain. Adam's bled out through the cracks and became something ugly.

He closed his eyes and breathed out. Then, when he opened them, he stacked Tad's books in the nook formed by the phone booth, smoothed out his notes, and tried to review them again. He could feel Tad watching him impatiently.

"I don't know about any family in Wales," he clarified.

When Tad spoke, he sounded frustrated.

"Thought you would know if anybody would," he told Adam. "You're always with him now."

"Sure," Adam said shortly. "But I don't know."

After that they didn't seem to have anything more to say to each other, though Tad seemed to want to linger. Adam wanted to study. It was still hard to study with Tad scrutinizing him so blatantly.

"He's not off work for another three hours," Adam told him.

"Okay, but like, why are you waiting?" Tad said defensively. "It looks totally gay, Parrish."

"Sure," Adam said again, just as short as before. "You and I both look totally gay waiting here for him."

Tad looked alarmed.

"Right. Tell him I got him his books. Bye," he said, and was gone.

Somehow Adam wasn't surprised. He turned back to his notes, but hardly had the time to start on Newton before Blue came in, so angry that her standing-on-end hair looked like it was trying to escape the fury written on her face.

"What's he doing here?" she snapped. "Do you know him?"

"Unfortunately," Adam said.

"The first time he showed up he hit on me, and now when I didn't tell him where you were fast enough, he asked me what my native language is!"

That sounded like Tad. That was the kind of thing Tad did.

"It's lion," Adam told her. "Or something with sharp teeth, anyway."

"Thank you," Blue said.

"They asked me if I was working in the school kitchen once. The crew team, I mean. Not Tad -- one of the other ones," Adam told her, because it was true. He'd been humiliated and then briefly thrown outside of the moment, aware of how funny the situation must have been even as he'd been the butt of the joke. 

"If somebody sends _me_ to the kitchen," Blue said, "they're going to find out pretty soon that that's where we keep the knives."

Adam had only known her a short while, but that seemed about right. It somehow didn't detract from the way she tucked herself into the free part of the phone booth, pulling herself up onto the shelf and hooking her legs on the arm of his chair. It gave him a very nice view of legs. He was momentarily overwhelmed.

"He brought these for Gansey?" she said. "For Tiwissock? Did you read them?"

"No, but he won't mind if you do," Adam said, looking away from her legs.

"No thanks," she said wryly. "I'm not that much of a reader. You're better at school than I am."

"How do you know? You don't go to my school," Adam pointed out.

"I know," Blue said flatly. "But I couldn't get into Aglionby even if I was a boy."

"I don't know," Adam said. "You cut your hair, you bind your chest."

"I grow like four inches at least," she agreed.

"I'd rather have you there than some of those guys," Adam told her truthfully. School had been an escape for him for some time, a pause, a place without the careful anticipatory dread that sometimes characterized the double-wide. But then he'd transferred to Aglionby. Blue would have made that better. Now she looked pleased and flattered at Adam's words, and even if Gansey liked her, Adam refused to feel bad for making her look that way. 

"Can I ask you something?" she told him.

"Shoot," Adam said. Physics shouldn't be abandoned, but it was. 

"It's about Noah," Blue said. "Is somebody hurting him?"

"I don't know," Adam said, surprised she was asking. Did she think Adam was the expert on being hurt? It was too wide-ranging a topic. Adam wasn't even an expert on his hurt. He said, "I don't know him that well."

Blue scoffed. 

"You go to school with him and you've known him for ages."

"I've known him as long as you have. I only really met him when Gansey introduced us."

Blue looked impossibly stymied by this.

"Who was he hanging out with before you guys? Not Gansey?"

"Not anyone," Adam said, because it was true. In the interests of fairness, he added, "But neither was I."

Blue was clearly moved by fairness as well. "Me neither," she admitted. "I'm asking because he was being weird the other day. He talked about how somebody was supposed to have died, but he didn't make it happen. And then at the church he got really upset by the blood."

"It was blood," Adam pointed out.

Blue shook her head, her hair casting a dark and aggressive halo. "I think he's -- I think he's not really..."

She trailed off. Adam waited.

"He's..." she tried again. "He's..."

Adam thought he understood. When he tried to put words to Noah, they didn't really fit for him either.

"Did you tell Gansey?" he asked Blue.

"No!" She said, flushing. "He wouldn't want to hear it, would he?"

Gansey would think it was disloyal. But Adam wasn't an especially loyal person anyway, and part of him felt lighter knowing that Blue clearly preferred truth to whatever would be the more loyal option in this case.

"Why do you think he was hurt, though?" he told Blue. "Instead of that he's just..." He couldn't find the right word. "Weird," he decided.

"He said somebody didn't die because he didn't make it happen," Blue said. "Why would he think he needed to kill anybody if they weren't hurting him?"

Adam could think of several reasons to kill someone if they weren't hurting you. They were in the way. They were insulting. They weren't grateful. They used too much electricity at night. They'd run away, but they hadn't run far enough.

He didn't say any of this. It felt unreal and too dramatic.

"I can ask him if someone's hurting him, if you want," he told Blue carefully. "If that's what you're worried about."

Blue nodded. 

"Maybe he'll tell you more than he tells me," she said.

But Adam doubted it. If Gansey was unaware that he liked Blue best, then Noah was blatantly obvious about it. As Adam and headed to the trailer factory for his shift, he tried to think of what he actually knew about Noah. It wasn't a lot. He didn't know what classes Noah took. He didn't know what dorm Noah lived in. He didn't even know Noah's last name.

Work at the factory was rote most days -- mass production at its finest -- so normally he would have had time to think about it. But today he was covering for Dale Ellis at one of the welding stations to make up part of his earlier loss. So work was still rote but now it also required careful attention, inserting fittings over pipes and then locking them into place with a blowtorch. He was blistered and coated in sweat when the bell rang for break, and he peeled off his gloves and helmet with no small amount of gratitude, searching his pockets for the glimmer of any change he could use to get a snack from the factory cafeteria.

He could only afford a coke from one of the vending machines, the same as usual. He sipped it slowly at one of the back tables and let his mind drift, too tired to do anything but wait for the bell to ring again. 

Something very brief and cold touched his arm. 

It was Noah. This wasn't the first time Noah had visited him here. He'd been coming ever since he and Adam had begun to hang out together. But now, thanks to Blue and her curiosity, Adam pulled his mind back from the heavy bank of work and study and no sleep and thought: _this_ is _weird_.

It was. Gansey always wondered where Noah was. But now Adam wondered how Noah got places. How Noah got to Nino's, how he got back to school. How he had made it to the factory with Gansey and the Camaro still at Nino's. Adam knew every single car at Aglionby. He could match every boy to their corresponding vehicle. But he realized now that he had no idea what Noah drove.

"Just ask what you want to ask," Noah said, sighing.

"How'd you get here?"

Noah shrugged.

"That's not an answer." 

In the low cafeteria light, Noah was extremely pale and somehow frightening in his paleness, a boy composed in grey watercolor who might wash off at any moment. 

"What car do you drive?" Adam asked him.

"That's not what Blue wanted to know," Noah said, fidgeting. "She's mad at me."

"She's worried about you. What car do you drive?"

"She's mad too. She's always a little mad," Noah pointed out. He smiled and it wasn't a smile. It was a weak movement at the corners of his mouth, like he'd fallen out of practice. "I like that. I think I used to have a Mustang?"

"Used to have? What do you have now?"

Noah shrugged.

"It was red."

"The Mustang? What happened to the Mustang?"

"Maybe it wasn't red."

"What _happened_ to the Mustang?"

"It's parked," Noah said, sounding put out. "Nothing happened to it. It just stayed parked. I don't think anything happened to it. Blue wanted you to ask what happened to _me_."

"You parked your car and walked away from it and that's why you don't have it anymore? That's not losing your car. That's just parking your car."

"But I died after I walked away from it," Noah said, like he was just pointing out the obvious. "I've been dead for seven years."

"Is that what you told Blue?" Adam asked, beginning to feel angry. It made things more difficult, his anger. It always did. Total domination. He didn't even know who he was angry with -- Noah or himself. He realized now that conversations with Noah were hazy things, bleeding out, washing away. It wasn't just Noah himself that was watercolor but the memory of all the things he'd tried to ask Noah. Noah had joked about this before, and Adam just hadn't bothered to remember it. But he had upset Blue with his joking. 

"I don't think that joke's very funny," Adam said now.

"Me neither," Noah said. He made a scrabbling, rabbity motion, sketching something out in the dust on the cafeteria table. "It's in the forest. My car. It's in the forest right here, on the line. Maybe you'll--"

The ringing of the factory bell sliced neatly through the rest of his sentence. Tucker, the foreman, clapped Adam on the arm. When Adam turned to look at him, he said, "Who're you fighting with, Adam?" The laugh lines around his eyes laughed a little harder. When Adam turned back to try and introduce Noah, wondering how on earth he could justify having Noah here, Noah was gone.

And the joke was still on Adam. In the dust of the table, Noah had drawn the same curving triangle Gansey was obsessed with: the symbol of the ley line. Near one of the points of the curving triangle, Noah had drawn a small faded cross, like a grave marker. 

-

Evenings at Fox Way had always been some of more relaxed times in the house, as relaxed as the mornings were jumbled and chaotic, because Fox Way was a working house even if its work was unconventional. Television sets and radios trilled quietly from behind closed doors, serenading aunts and friends and cousins who'd just come in from work, kicked off their shoes, and sighed their way to dinner. Small half-cousins were picked up and gently directed to the appropriate cars, customers caught notice of the time and hurried out to catch dinner at home, and Orla's telephone prophecies became hushed. This was the hour for calls from unfaithful husbands on the way to meet their mistresses, miserable women with no one waiting for them, employees who wondered whether they should steal from the till. Would-be murderers.

Or so Orla always said. Blue thought she went hushed and closed her door because this was usually the time her various suitors called. 

"The bewitching hour," Jimi had said once, about this time.

"With Orla? More like the ditching hour. It's a new one every few weeks," Maura had said.

And then Jimi had pointed out that with Maura the hour could best be called another -- _itch_ word entirely, and after that they'd stopped trying to name the hour. 

But lately, Blue had the furious suspicion that they might start again. Only not because of Orla this time. Because of her. Lately, at the bewitching hour or the ditching hour, whichever you preferred, Fox Way had begun to receive a new visitor. 

Blue didn't mean to bring him home. She just didn't like the thought of him living in his car. And anyway sometimes it wasn't just Gansey. Sometimes it was Noah, too. Adam she had a harder time with. She didn't want to get him in trouble, so she wasn't ever sure if she should ask him over; and he was peculiarly polite about inviting himself, which was to say he never did it. 

Today, Gansey was the only one over for dinner. They'd come straight from Nino's, though he'd insisted on stopping at the Starbucks on the way and picking something up for dessert. He usually did this, magnanimous without being overbearing about it, because, as he'd explained, "Jane, I can hardly turn up empty-handed when you're feeding me three times a week."

She wondered how he could afford it. It was no secret that Gansey's crew team had turned against him and leveled some exorbitant rich boy tax for the privilege of remaining their captain. Blue didn't know how Gansey could stand it; he didn't seem like the type to take that sort of thing. In fact, she knew he wasn't the type, because she'd seen him deal with Kavinsky. But maybe certain Aglionby circles were like that. Maybe the minute you wore the wrong pastel shade of shorts, or drove up in a car that didn't speak German, you were out.

Before, she would have found this to be cosmic justice if she'd bothered to think about it, which she probably wouldn't have. Now it felt petty and depressed her. She bought Gansey a fancy coffee drink to make up for it. He was always looking longingly at the people with fancy coffee drinks.

"Mint!" he said, walking up to the stoop with her and sampling it. "Thank you. Mint is a natural bee and wasp repellent."

"I don't think that's real mint," Blue told him. "Probably some syrup they put in it."

"I didn't think it would save me from bees and wasps anyway," he told her, flashing her a smile. "I'm all out of Epipens. Those are gone with everything else, I'm afraid."

It took Blue a minute to realize what he was saying. 

"You're allergic?" she asked, as they let themselves into the house. "The government took your _Epipens_?"

Blue was not one of those people who had strong opinions about government incursion, but this was taking things too far.

"I didn't ask anyone to leave any for me," Gansey said thoughtfully, as he set down his books in the kitchen. "I've never been stung. It didn't occur to me to tell anyone I needed them. Maybe I could get them if I asked, though."

"That seems kind of important," Blue pointed out.

Jimi walked in and wordlessly rifled through Gansey's Starbucks goodies, selecting a cake pop and patting him thankfully on the arm. Calla followed and took his coffee-mint drink.

"Coffee? Good."

"He got you coffee?" Maura called out from wherever she was upstairs.

"Sure," Calla said, shrugging, and walked out. 

Gansey stared after her, bemused. The older residents of Fox Way were unaffected by his kingliness. Calla worked at Aglionby and was decidedly against being impressed by Aglionby boys. Persephone thought that human beings couldn't be impressive, or at least they shouldn't be because, as she'd explained to Blue once, impressive had consequences. You couldn't just go around leaving impressions everywhere. It wouldn't be right. And Maura was Maura.

She appeared now to rifle through the Starbucks bag herself, but she didn't end up taking anything out and she didn't leave. She pulled up a chair and sat across from Blue and Gansey with the same wordless comfort she always exuded. 

"So this ley line," she said without preamble.

Gansey looked delighted. Blue wasn't sure if she should be delighted too, or if she was feeling an odd sort of betrayal. Maura was somehow Blue's and her wordless comfort doubly so. She had a slipshod, casual approach to motherhood that worked perfectly for both her and Blue, and while it made sense for her to sit down and pronounce things to Blue, it didn't make sense for her to do it to other people, not unless she was charging them for it.

But now she didn't pronounce. She just asked, "Where have you been on it? Besides the graveyard."

Gansey didn't bat an eyelash at the question. He seemed to take it for granted that Blue would have told her mother about the old graveyard. He slid neatly, unusually into Fox Way in that way, never quite a part of it, but never as critical as Blue would have expected him to be. Now he reached for his pile of books and sorted through them until he came up with a journal, new-looking but already crammed with his various observations on the ley line.

"Adam gave it to me," he explained. "Something about the integrity of my physics notes."

He passed the notebook to Maura and Maura held it out to Blue so they could look at it together. While they did this, Jimi came in to stir an experimental kind of soup that Blue definitely wasn't going to eat, Orla stole all the Starbucks muffins, and Gansey turned his attention to his new books on Wales.

He'd been to more places on the line than Blue would have expected. And he'd timed and dated them all, so she could see that he was visiting some of these places at night, alone, when he should have been sleeping. It made her frown. It made Maura pull a face at her frown.

 _What?_ Blue mouthed.

 _You aren't leaving the house at two in the morning to explore the ley line,_ Maura mouthed back.

Direct authority didn't quite suit Maura, but Blue supposed this was a reasonable request. She went back to Gansey's notes. Churches tended to fall on the ley line for some reason, and fields and pockets of wild, unclaimed greenery. Gansey had noted that banks did not; schools did not; most of the inhabited parts of the town did not.

"Very good," Maura said out loud.

"Thank you," Gansey said, without looking up from his own reading.

This annoyed Blue. Maura was somehow not looking at her in a very obvious way. And Blue was unused to feeling like the interloper between Maura and Gansey.

"Do more people know?" Blue demanded. It had never occurred to her to ask whether anyone else believed in the ley line. The ley line was 300 Fox Way business, and 300 Fox Way business was a joke to most other people. Blue's classmates had always seemed to feel that her mother was a somewhat hipper version of a party clown.

"That was exactly my question," Gansey said, still turning pages on Wales. He murmured, "Do they believe in the line? If they believe, why are they keeping away from it?"

"People don't always run to what they believe in," Maura noted.

Gansey's eyes flickered up briefly, annoyed or perturbed or perhaps simply unsettled. Blue couldn't tell. He was all lashes and glasses and handsome square cheekbones.

Maura folded his book closed and passed it to Blue. Then she said, "I sometimes see places on the line. And then sometimes -- sometimes I don't."

This caught Gansey's attention fully.

"What do you mean you don't?"

"I mean that I don't see some of it," Maura said. "It's not there, even when it is. Or sometimes I see things I don't expect."

"Black dogs," Gansey said, snapping his fingers and making it into an epiphany.

"I mean more than local strays," Maura said. Her grin was wry, but she still wasn't looking at Blue. "Neeve was on that line, the last time Neeve was."

Gansey and Blue both said it, but Blue said it louder and finished first. "The last time Neeve _was_?"

"Sometimes I see things on the line, and sometimes I don't," Maura repeated. "For the past few weeks now, Neeve's in the don't column."

Jimi was still stirring her soup, but now Blue could hear the slosh of it as she stirred faster, trying to pretend she wasn't listening. Maura rolled her eyes at this.

"Tangling with the ley line," she told Gansey, "can move you into the don't column. I don't need to tell you to be careful, right?"

This last sentence was not just directed at Gansey, but at Blue too. Then, because she was Maura, she stood, stole the Starbucks bag and whatever was left in it and left the room. It wasn't drama. It was finality. Gansey blinked after her as she left.

"Does that mean not to look into it?" he asked Blue. He didn't sound as if he would stop even if it did mean that.

Jimi slosh-sloshed her soup.

"She didn't say that," Blue pointed out.

But of course Maura hadn't. Maura thought it was wrong to order young people around. And she was a psychic, not a CEO. She didn't make demands. She made predictions, and that one had sounded like the kind of prediction Blue wasn't too fond of.

"Wait here," she told Gansey shortly, and went to confront her mother. But in the hallway she ran into Persephone, who for some reason was heading to the door. And then the door rang and it was Adam, in dirty work clothes, with his delicate mouth a dissatisfied line.

"I need to talk to you about Noah," he said, instead of hello. Blue frowned at him.

"Did you ask him?" she said. Rather than lead Adam into the kitchen where Gansey was, they ducked into the reading room instead. Blue felt a little bad keeping Gansey out of this, but only a little bad. She didn't know how to broach the topic of Noah with him yet.

"He was joking with you," Adam said now. He sat down on the couch and let his legs splay out, in defiance of his usual behavior. Adam usually seemed to be trying not to take up much space. Now he was doing the opposite, and abruptly he no longer felt delicate and intriguing but somehow charged and angry, too much boy. It was unfamiliar. It wasn't the Adam she thought she was signing up for. 

"He was telling you that whole thing about being dead," he told Blue flatly. "That's what upset you. It was just more of that."

"Did I _tell_ you it was more of that?" Blue said. "If it was that, I would have told you so."

She didn't like the way he was lining up like her experiences like he automatically knew what had happened, instead of asking her to tell him. Gansey did this too, but from Gansey it wasn't this sudden and from Gansey she expected it, so she could forgive it more easily.

"He was joking," Adam said, still declaratory, still unsuited to being declaratory.

"He said he wasn't!"

"And you just believed him?"

"Sorry I actually believe my friends when they tell me things!"

There was a faint knocking from somewhere, penetrating through the haze of Calla watching TV in the room next door and Orla suddenly raising her voice at the telephone in the room above them. But Blue ignored it. 

"I would like to know what you asked him," she said.

"He was at the factory. I couldn't figure out how."

"Don't you mean why?" Blue asked. She wanted to know the _why_ of Noah. Why had he said those things, and why had he come to visit her that night, and why didn't he eat or talk to her family when he came over? _Why_ was usually a more useful question than _how_ , anyway, but with Noah it was the whole question.

Adam passed a hand through his hair. Hair and hand were both dusty, nearly the same color. He said, slowly, "I wanted to know how. It's industrially zoned, out of the way. And I realized that I don't know what car he drives. But when I asked, he made it all a joke about his car and a forest and the ley line."

"It wasn't a joke," Noah said, from the doorway. 

Both Adam and Blue started. Gansey and Noah stood staring at them. Gansey had one of his books in his hands.

"No one else was answering the door," Gansey observed. "So I did. I agree with Noah. The line doesn't seem like a joke to me."

He looked very significantly at each of them, his gaze somehow weighted. Blue felt herself redden and became furious because of it.

"How did you _get_ here?" Adam asked suddenly. He was looking at Noah. Noah looked back at him guilelessly. Adam stood, crossed to the window, and looked out at the street. When he looked back at them, he was frowning.

"Does it matter if he's here now?" Gansey said. "I want to show you something."

He balanced his book on his hip. It was a large, leather-bound tome, old-looking and clearly expensive, and to see him be so intimate with it only reminded Blue that this was a boy who didn't often know the cost of things even now. There was something regal to how carelessly familiar he could be with precious things. He flipped through the pages.

"I found the Welsh prince," he said, but the way he said it was _I found my Welsh prince_.

The page he showed them was yellowed, the illustration faded. Blue made out curled hair and a magnificent beard, a regal mantle and pennants with those medieval lions that looked a bit like dogs on them.

Gansey underlined the caption and then, like he thought this was helpful, also read it. 

" _Owain Glyndŵr_ ," he said, and his voice was full of the sound of something beginning. 

-

But, "Owen Glendower to non-Welsh speakers," was what he said after the physics exam a few days later.

This had less of a ring. He frowned after he said it.

And Blue said, "Non-Welsh speakers? That's all of us." 

Gansey made a firm gesture that was intended to politely wave her into the Camaro without further argument. Instead, like a vestige of Richard Gansey II, it came across like he was making a decisive point at the head of a conference table or to a crowd of senators. Because he was only standing here on the pavement outside Blue's school, several of the locals looked at him curiously. He wondered if Adam knew some of them, but they didn't look at Adam. Unlike Gansey, who had stripped down to a t-shirt to combat the heat, Adam had opted to keep his Aglionby sweater on and was now looking antisocially at his battered shoes, clearly trying to keep Henrietta at bay. Gansey frowned again and waved again. He wanted both Adam and Blue in the Camaro.

He wanted to go find Glendower.

He didn't technically have proof that Glendower was on the ley line, or even in Virginia. Adam had reminded him of this at length on the way to Aglionby this morning. Gansey had taken the reminder, repurposed it as a call to further research, and used it to compose a brief, to-the-point post on a Welsh history forum asking for more information on one Owain Glyndŵr, age approximately 53 or else 653, lawyer, statesman, magician, warrior, wise man, and king. Date of disappearance, circa 1415.

Or at least he'd tried to keep it brief. It had been hard. Glendower's story had a certain thrill: the magical signs that had accompanied his birth, the impossible victories over his enemies, his wisdom and his courage and the respect that still survived him. The way he hadn't died, but had simply strode out of the history books, become the legend of a long-vanished king.

"If you use up all your internet, they're going to reduce your speed," Adam had told him, watching him type away on his phone.

"It gets used up?" Gansey had said. That didn't seem real. 

Now he checked the phone again as he climbed into the car. No responses yet. If he posted something wilder, madder, would he see someone prodded into answering his questions? This was a cheap tactic, but perhaps it would be an effective one.

 _I think Glendower's body might have been brought to the New World_ , he posted on a whim, in answer to himself. _That's why I'm asking._

Then he put the phone down. It was a very Aglionby thing to flash it around, or so he'd heard from Blue, and he had no more use for it at the moment anyway. He had a free afternoon, at least until his five p.m. shift at Nino's, and he had Adam and Blue if not Noah, and he had the green swell of the hills just ahead, with the ley line winding invisibly through them. 

He really did think that Glendower must have _something_ to do with this place. The word 'Tywysog,' which showed up, in that form, on the oldest maps and earliest records, had to mean something. Likewise for the other Welsh place names he'd found scattered around the area in his research last night, not to mention the old articles about fifteenth-century Welsh artifacts found on Virginia soil. These were the hard facts, and he marshalled them accordingly, though next to them, somewhat more lovingly, he also arrayed the legends that spoke of the powers of the last Tywysog Cymru, or Prince of Wales, and of the faithfulness of his magicians, and of their knowledge of the ley lines. These things could not be coincidences. Gansey wasn't sure he believed in coincidences. He would admit that some parts of the story were a bit fantastic: Glendower's powers of invisibility, for example, and the idea that he was not merely buried, but sleeping and likely to grant all manner of favors. The genie king. All that was probably too fantastic to believe, or at least too fantastic to believe publicly, in front of the average person.

Hadn't the ravens been fantastic? With the way they had scratched the ley line symbol into the dust?

And as for the invisibility powers, there were days when Gansey would have traded most of what he had left for that. Some of Blue's schoolmates passed the Camaro now and caught sight of him, then devolved into whispering and giggling. He was not hard on the eyes, he knew, but now he could never be sure if it was him that prompted this kind of thing in people, or whether they'd recognized him and knew about his mother. 

Henrietta was a refuge and a marvel. But he couldn't ever really forget that it was also a town that liked to see raven boys fall and fall hard.

"Can we go?" Blue said suddenly. She brought her face up to Gansey's headrest now, so that he was neck and neck with her curious dark eyes and the tickle of her hair. It was somehow comforting.

"Of course," he said. It just hadn't occurred to him to start the car because he'd been expecting someone to get in the front seat, and no one had. Blue and Adam had both opted for the back today. Gansey raised an eyebrow at Adam in the mirror.

"Noah might come," Adam and Blue both said at once. 

"He can sit in the back if he does come," Gansey said.

But they seemed to be challenging each other over something, and neither would move. Gansey started the car and heard them talking, low beneath the radio, about red Mustangs and the ley line and gullibility and listening to friends. 

"Is there something you want to tell me?" he asked them lightly. 

Silence.

Gansey pulled back reluctantly from Glendower. They were behaving like the crew team. Not like friends, but like followers. And he did not want that from them. After staying up all night to read about Glendower, this felt doubly-depressing. Glendower had managed fights adroitly, fairly, kindly. His people had always looked to him for guidance. Gansey's people didn't do this with Gansey. He didn't know what kind of person he was if Blue was still fighting with Noah, and now Adam appeared to be fighting with Noah and Blue. What good was he if he could not inspire them to put aside their squabbling? Sighing, he lowered the radio and reached for his journal. When he held it out to the back seat, Adam took it.

"I've charted the places I haven't visited yet," he told them. "But we may want to visit some of the ones I have. I didn't know what I was looking for then, but now I know. Glendower. He's the clearest thing we have linking all of these parts -- the Ridge, the ravens, the ley line. He's what we're looking for."

In the mirror, he could see Adam stare down at journal, doubtful. Then Blue was leaning over him to look at it and he shifted, startled by her sudden proximity. Gansey recognized and sympathized every single one of the emotions on his face.

"Is that an old bridge?" Blue said, pointing at one ley line spot he'd visited a few nights ago. Gansey nodded. But Adam said, suddenly, "I know where we can go."

He flipped back a few places to where Gansey had painstakingly drawn out a map of Henrietta so that he could capture the topography, the shape of the hills, the line that ran perfectly straight through the center. Adam followed the line with one thin finger until it came to where two hills ended, to a point on the triangle that was the ridge.

"There," he said. 

"That's too far," Blue said. "That's the farthest place on the line without leaving Henrietta."

Adam shrugged and said, "I'm due at the demo yard by four-thirty, so we have three and a half hours, but I think we can make it. There won't be much traffic right now."

Gansey agreed. He rooted through his school bag and found a pack of study tabs that he passed to Adam. 

"Mark it," he instructed. 

Adam did this. To get to the spot he'd selected, they would have to take the interstate for part of the way, which was a relief. The interstate was easy. It was when Gansey strayed from it that he tended to get lost. He didn't mind, though. He was good at finding things while he wandered: a cave with the sounds of birds singing in it; and a strange pool behind a rotting house that did not quite show his reflection as it ought to be, but that seemed to suggest something else was peering out of his eyes. He'd described the former to Adam while at Boyd's, and the latter to Blue while at Nino's, and as he turned off for the interstate he decided to make sure they both knew about both. 

"But now you think we'll find a sleeping king?" Blue said.

Yes and no. _Sleeping_ felt like he was asking too much of a world he had put too little into. He could settle for buried. He could settle for being the one to find the bones of the lost king. Something in him gasped painfully when he thought of Glendower being buried here. A king hundreds of miles away from his kingdom for some reason, alone. This town his burial place, the mystical spot at his journey's end. 

Gansey wasn't so stupid that he couldn't see the parallels to his own story. But it was about more than that. It was about proving to himself that he could do this, that he could see this place for the marvel it was, and uncover the secrets that it held. 

That would give all these past few weeks -- that would give the rest of his life, if this was to be the rest of his life -- some meaning.

"We're probably not going to find him today," he told Blue now, because he wasn't expecting it to be immediate. 

Adam made an undignified snorting sound. Because he'd been nothing but skepticism incarnate for the past week, Gansey classed the sound as irrelevant. Adam was not at his best at the moment. Exams were over, and until grades came in Adam would be more nervous than he let on about, less carefully controlled than he would like to be. 

"Are your exams done, Jane?" he asked Blue as the Camaro roared agreeably down the Interstate. 

Blue looked as though she would rather discuss municipal waste management.

"Just math left," she said.

"Calculus?"

Blue shrugged. 

Gansey had been raised to recognize a conversational failure. It was not a failure in the other person. It was simply a failure to select the right topic. Evidently Blue was not good at math. He tried again, with a sure starter.

"Well, when you're done we'll have more time to work on your engine skills," he observed. "Parrish finally has a student worth his time, I think."

Blue huffed. Adam sighed. Blue said something that sounded suspiciously like _not if he doesn't listen to her, he doesn't_. 

"Is there something we should talk about?" Gansey asked, abandoning courtesy. It was easier to abandon than he thought it would be, such an innately Ganseyish concept that he hardly thought it would be poorer off without him. 

"Something's off about Noah," Adam said now, in answer to his question.

"Yes, because Noah could be _hurt_ ," Blue insisted.

Theoretically, both could be true, so Gansey couldn't understand where the conflict was. He said this. Blue rolled her eyes in response. So did Adam, in this her mirror and complement 

Gansey said, carefully, "Why don't you each explain what's going on from your perspective?"

It took the rest of their time on the interstate to get it all out, and it mostly seemed to be that Noah was strange to them, which Gansey found disloyal. But he held his tongue on that as they tried to explain. By the time they'd each said their piece -- each piece jumbled and inconsistent and unsure, as though they didn't even know how to explain the concept of a Noah -- almost an hour had passed and they had turned onto the dirt road that would take them to Adam's chosen spot.

"Noah was the first person to talk to me after I lost my money," Gansey told them.

They'd said theirs. Now came his. Noah was rumpled, and unusual, and seemed to thrive on personal mystery. He never ate in front of other people, and he never cleaned his face. He had an unusual sense of humor. But Gansey would never forget that moment by the side of the road with his chest so tight that it might have been caved in, with Noah attempting to comfort him.

Without revealing the worst details, he said as much. Noah had seen him during the worst. Noah came to him at night, when he struggled to sleep. Noah perhaps knew more about him than any other soul alive.

"I can't believe he comes to you at night," Adam muttered.

"Not the point, Parrish," Gansey said. But before he could say further the car let out a strange sound. 

All thoughts of Noah gave way to concern for the Camaro. Gansey barely had any time to pull it over to the side of the road, beneath a low-hanging, mournful kind of tree. Then the car gave way.

At the very least, this ended the argument. Gansey couldn't let the Camaro break down totally, because he lived in it. Adam was its most careful attendant and wouldn't let it falter. And Blue needed it to learn. She and Gansey examined it, but it was Adam who made the diagnosis.

"Overheated," he said, and his hands moved quickly over the car interior, running through some complex internal checklist. "It's not the radiator, and your cooling fan is good. Can't be the water pump -- water pump's good." 

He looked up, his elegant face worn through with frustration.

"Worst case, it's that the thermostat is stuck," he reported. "Blocking the coolant flow."

Prompt about it, Blue said, "So if we check the upper radiator hose by opening the radiator cap--"

Gansey was already reaching for it, but Adam stopped him.

"Engine's hot," he said. "We have to let it cool for a few minutes before we test it. Then we'll know for sure. Might have to call Boyd to see about fixing it if that's the problem."

They sat by the road for ten minutes, leafing through Gansey's books and journal, waiting for the engine to cool. After ten minutes, Adam got up and checked the thermostat, then circled back to report that it was stuck and that they would have to call Boyd. Leaving his journal with Blue, Gansey stood and crossed to the car to get his phone. He couldn't resist checking for replies as he did. One reply. R. Malory, United Kingdom. But Adam and Blue were looking at him so expectantly that he shelved his excitement and dialed Boyd's rather than read the reply. 

"Hi, it's Dick Campbell," he said when Boyd picked up. His voice came out somehow wrong to his ears. He didn't like using the false name. 

"Dick? Using a phone?" Boyd said.

Gansey didn't know why that was so surprising.

"Good for you," Boyd said. "You get it yourself, Dick? Or did Adam help you?"

"I am perfectly capable of getting my own phone," Gansey said, bemused. But Adam came forward and said, hurriedly, "You'd better let me explain the problem," and then the phone was out of his hands and Adam was vanishing around the side of the Camaro to examine it again. Gansey let him handle it and sat down next to Blue in the dirt. 

He was suddenly very sorry that she was fighting with Adam and Noah, and he was sorry that all his attempts to fix it were essentially worthless to her. His mother had always said, _the most valuable person in the room is the one who can listen to all the others and keep them on the right track_ , and if this was the case, then right now he was no value added. He closed his eyes and massaged them under the rims of his glasses, unsure of what to say.

"You don't have to fix it when we're fighting," Blue said suddenly. 

He stopped massaging. He felt so strangely known -- Blue always did this to him -- that he wanted to grab her hand. But her hand was tracing patterns on the journal, around the destination Adam had marked out for them earlier, so he let it be.

"And if I don't want you to fight?" he said.

Blue made the kind of brisk sound generals made when they were informed of casualty predictions.

"I'll fight when I think it's necessary," she told him point blank. "It doesn't have anything to do with you."

He frowned at her, but before he could reply Adam came back, hitting the phone anxiously against his hand.

"He'll need to get the parts before he comes out, and it'll be an hour, maybe more before he gets here."

"Oh," Gansey said. "Alright. Well. We'll wait."

But Adam didn't look too happy about it. He continued to knock the phone against his knuckles. 

"I have to be back in a little over two hours," he said finally. "There won't be enough time to fix it and get back."

He made passed the phone back to Gansey and began to walk away, but Blue stood and grabbed his sleeve before he could go.

"It's okay," she said. "We'll find someone to take you back." Calm, she rattled off a list of family members. Gansey made her slow down so he could get the actual numbers. He and Blue worked through the list of her contacts at Fox Way, trying to find someone with a car who might make it out here in time to bring Adam back. Fifteen minutes later, they'd reached no one.

"It's fine," Adam muttered, though it obviously wasn't. 

"We'll try again," Gansey told him. "Until we find somebody."

But he had no sooner re-dialed Persephone's number than he heard the roar of another car coming down the dusty backroad.

Today it was less black and more charcoal grey, dappled by the light coming through the boughs hanging over the road. It didn't stop as much as slide aggressively before them until then it wasn't even sliding. It was pinning them into place before the Camaro. The BMW was a car with a hunting instinct. 

Gansey thought there was something brittle to Ronan Lynch as he climbed out of it, or maybe that was just what came of seeing him bleed out all over a church. His smile was thin. He stopped before the journal and toed it with his boot, right in the spot Adam had marked for them to visit, like he was unsure if he was prodding at treasure or garbage. Blue seized it, looking offended.

"Lynch," Gansey said warningly. 

"Car trouble?" was all Lynch said. The question mark at the end didn't quite come through. It was less a question than the prelude to an argument, but then this was how Lynch talked. His eyes skidded disinterestedly off of Gansey and Blue and the Camaro and the journal. He didn't look at Adam.

"Stuck thermostat," Gansey told him now.

"Where's it stuck?" Lynch said, eyeing the Camaro. "The Seventies?"

"Ha, ha," Gansey told him smoothly. He still felt that there was more to Ronan Lynch than met the eye, but this was not the ideal time to meet Ronan Lynch. 

"I don't suppose you're going back to Henrietta?" Blue said suddenly. "Because if not, there's no point to you being here."

Lynch did something with his mouth that was jagged and dangerous. Possibly a smile. Possibly not. Only Ronan Lynch could smile and make it look like a criminal act. 

"I saw your car had stopped," Lynch told Blue. "I figured this was Dick's new home for the night."

"Were you watching us? Nice of you to call for help when you saw we needed it!" Blue said.

"I thought Dick was camping out by the side of this road," Lynch repeated. "Everybody knows he's doing it."

Blue and Adam both bristled, but Gansey had heard this muttered after him by Skip and the others so many times that by now he counted himself immune. 

"She's right," he said. "You can help us if you're going back to Henrietta."

"Gansey," Adam said. 

Gansey turned to him. After a week of exams, he was somehow more colorless than usual, so that the odd lines of his face looked odder still. Gansey hated the thought of what might happen to him if he didn't make it to work in time, and if his father found out. Gansey hated that he had no control over the outcome, that he could offer no reassurance, that their best way out lay with someone Adam hated.

He put a hand on Adam's shoulder and gently pulled him aside. He said, low, "Do you want me to go with him? I could have him leave me at Fox Way, see if I could find someone to come get you--"

Adam shook his head, like this was unthinkable. " _You_ go with _him_?"

Well, it wasn't the most efficient solution. Just the most comfortable one for Adam. 

"Or I stay here with Blue and wait for Boyd, and he drives you straight to the demo yard," Gansey said. "That's the other way we do this."

Something completely unrecognizable passed over Adam's face.

"Sure," he said flatly. "You stay here with Blue. That makes sense."

He shoved Gansey's hand off his shoulder with one jerky, unexpected movement, and walked to the BMW. 

"I need a ride back," he told Lynch tensely. "Come on."


	6. Chapter 6

Dick Gansey had been looking for Cabeswater. Maybe he didn't know he'd been looking for it. But that was what he'd have found if his car hadn't broken down. 

Now Gansey's car glittered like a remote gem in Ronan's rearview mirror. Ronan tore his eyes away from it, but the rich mud-brown road was no better. The world was too heightened. He kept it cold enough to bite in the BMW, so that Adam Parrish shivered next to him, but outside the car he could see the haze of heat, the overwhelming green of the trees. The hollows between his fingers were still sticky from his brief foray outside the BMW, and he could smell the wet dirt of the countryside, sweat a faint overlay. His sweat or Adam's. He couldn't tell. Either way it was acute, blowing out his senses.

K's green pills couldn't do this. Ronan's could. Ronan's were colorless. He hadn't shown them to K yet. He wasn't sure he would. This sat heavy between him and Adam now, sacrilege perched on the armrest. Adam didn't notice it. 

Something else sat between them. Adam almost certainly didn't notice that either. Ronan took one hand and forced up the black bands on his other wrist, until they clipped his forearms and pinched. He could feel his skin stretching uncomfortably.

Dick Gansey had Cabeswater marked out in his journal, set apart by a red study tab. Red for stop. Red for warning. 

Red was an appropriate color for Ronan's life right now.

"You can drop me off near the garage," Adam was saying. "I'll find my way after that." 

The world narrowed. Adam wasn't working at the garage today. Ronan wouldn't ask where Adam was working instead. He'd discovered Adam Parrish's day job by accident, when he really had needed his tire pressure checked. He'd discovered Adam Parrish's address by accident, when he'd been looking for Prokopenko's. He'd even come upon the Camaro today by accident, because he'd been meaning to visit Cabeswater. Accident was the only way he could know about Adam Parrish; Ronan's code wouldn't allow him to go beyond that. That would not be Ronan. That would be K showing up at the Barns.

_What happens if I feed a pill to one of your fucking cows, man?_

"What were you doing out here anyway?" Ronan forced out. 

The real question was why Cabeswater, but Ronan swapped it out at the last minute. 

Adam didn't answer. Ronan hadn't really been expecting him to. 

They would hit the interstate soon, and when they did it would be south to Henrietta or north to Cabeswater, so there -- at the fork in the road -- Ronan would lose his chance to show Adam the forest. He struggled to find the right words now.

"You been out here before?"

"I live here," Adam said.

He meant Henrietta. Ronan had overheard Adam enough times to know that Adam talked about Henrietta the way K did: a worthless fishbowl of a town. Adam made it seem like a trap. K just wanted to pick it up and smash it on the ground. Ronan didn't like either option; Henrietta was not valuable in and of itself, but it was rife with dreams and sleeping things, danger and magic. 

"I'm not asking you if you've been out of the trailer park," Ronan said. "I'm asking if you've been out here. Where the forest is."

Adam staried at him uneasily. Ronan almost made the mistake of staring back. He caught himself in time. With the pills coursing through his system, he thought Adam would be too much, too real, too soon. Odd and elegant. Easily recreated in his dreams.

"You and Dick and that girl were heading there," he said now. The name felt heavy and forbidden in his head, but Ronan was going to say it anyway. "To the forest. To Cabeswater."

It became even harder not to look at Adam, because Adam was shifting with unease. Ronan was staring ahead at the road and yet part of him was creating it down to the last detail: Adam's fair, alarmed brows; the rise of color in his cheeks; the way his shirt must be riding up, so that his skin rubbed the leather seat uncomfortably. 

"That's the place you were going," Ronan said, a little defensively. "I could take you there now."

"Are you on drugs?"

Yes. 

"I have to be at work in like two hours," Adam said. 

That felt like a challenge. They were approaching the fork. Ronan held off on the accelerator, but only just. 

"I could get you to the forest and back by then." 

Adam spoke car, so it wasn't the proposition that shocked him, or the fact that it was coming from Ronan, or the fact that they were in this situation at all. Instead he said, "Not in this you won't," like the worst thing about this moment was that Ronan believed the BMW was up to it. 

The BMW was up to it. They were at the turnoff. 

"I bet you I can." 

"You have nothing to bet me."

"I help keep K away from Dick."

That got Adam's attention. Ronan had known it would, though the fact that it did made him taste ash. 

"Tick tock, Parrish," he told Adam now, to cover his irritation. "Are we doing this? You come see the forest. I try to keep K off your back."

He had to say _try_ , because he couldn't promise to succeed. This was K they were talking about, and K had it in for Dick Gansey. K expected the world to go to shit, wanted it to. The death and disgrace of the Gansey family should have been like Christmas for K. Would have been, if Gansey had ever let on that he was defeated by it. 

_It's like having no present under the tree_ , K had complained.

 _No one ever gave you a present, you shitbag,_ Ronan had told him.

Neither he nor K was likely to make the nice list.

Because Adam wasn't answering, he had to swerve left and head south to Henrietta. But then Adam said, "Wait. Fine."

No one was on the road except for them, or hardly no one, and there were no partitions on this stretch to block their way. So Ronan made a showy u-turn to get on the side heading north. Adam touched a hand to the roof of the car and cursed softly under his breath.

"Are you on _drugs_?"

Still yes.

But it was fine. There was a stream by the side of the road here with a clay bed that made the rushing water look thick and dark, like blood or oil. Ronan could see every blistered berry on every hedge, every thorn on the weedy flowers by the side of the road. The tar beneath the BMW's wheels was discolored and cracked, a million fractures for Ronan to note and discard. He saw every bit of sloughing mud, every stem of wild grass, all the vivid blue ribbons of hills and mountains around them. Next to him, Adam was quiet, but even the quiet was something tangible and heightened to Ronan. 

And to Ronan, the speed limit was an illusory thing, so they made it in ten minutes. They were really in the mountains now, with the field around the BMW sloping and dipping. Ronan climbed out and smelled the green all around him, felt the fuzzy grass tickle his ankles. Every insect was battling every other insect to see who could be the most discordant. He led Adam over another stream, bubbling clear and light this time, and past the slender dogwoods with their explosions of flowers. Here the light was golden, the ferns fought their way up through rocks in order to snare Ronan's legs, the birds worked together to drown out the insects. Ronan caught a piece of moss and peeled it off, watching it coat his hands with dirt and green. The light here glimmered. Everything felt realer than real, so real it hurt.

They were beneath trees so huge that they were growing together into fantastic castles before Adam said, "What is this? What are you trying to do? Are you going to--"

It was horror-movie perfect. Not actually funny, but Ronan couldn't help a jagged laugh. Adam Parrish thought Ronan was going to kill him and stuff his body in a tree, probably. Unlikely. Ronan didn't make dead bodies happen. They just happened. In his dreams. In the driveway. In the grass.

"Some self-preservation skills you have, Parrish," he said now. "We're almost there."

They were. It was only a little further, and then they were at the great beech Ronan knew so well, with the clear pool bubbling up around it. Ronan knew it was there, so he stopped in time, but Adam Parrish didn't and so he almost walked into it. His skin was warm where Ronan pulled him back.

"God! You could have warned me. You didn't even look down." 

Ronan didn't want to look down, because if he did the pool might have sky-blue fish in it, or ribbony black eels, or ancient sea turtles with bulging eyes. As he thought of them they felt so true that he could see every knobbly, stubby limb and every striated segment on the shell.

"There's a turtle in there," Adam said faintly. "A big one."

He said it like it was impossible. It wasn't. Everything was possible here, especially now that Ronan was here. With Adam Parrish, too. You were not supposed to feel the workings of your heart, but Ronan thought he could feel his, blood rushing in, swelling and filling. Everything so fast and alive that it was painful.

Adam was already climbing over the rocks to the other side of the pool. Ronan caught up to him by the rotting cavity in the oak tree. Adam stretched one thin hand at the ring of fungus. The tree drew you in; that was what it did. Ronan shoved Adam's hand away clumsily before he could look inside.

"Come on," he said. "There's more." 

He led Adam in deeper, tripping over angry roots and not caring about it. The trees sighed at him. They didn't really know what to do with Ronan. Ronan didn't blame them. 

Adam began to notice when the trees became spindly and weathered, when the colors of the leaves shifted. It was colder here. Beneath the thin cotton of Adam's t-shirt, his skin would be bumpy, every pore responding to the unexpected change in climate.

"What is--"

"Cabeswater," Ronan said.

The trees weren't speaking to him right now, so he couldn't show Adam that. But he could draw him deeper still, to where the water in the stream was black beneath a haze of ice scratched by naked willow branches. He brought Adam to a yew so massive that its branches did not begin until ten feet up, so that with its blanket of snow it made a cave. Inside, it had the glittering, thrilling emptiness of a cathedral. Ronan sat on a rock and closed his eyes, trying to preserve the moment. 

If he could preserve moments like these, he could dream anything.

"Is this what you were looking for?" he asked Adam.

"Gansey should be here," Adam said.

Fury lit up every one of Ronan's nerves. Adam was scrutinizing the ice on the tree-trunk, patterned diamond-bright and fragile. Against the glittering backdrop of snow, he was even more colorless than usual, except where the cold brought red to the tips of his ears and nose. The first time Ronan had dreamed this boy, he hadn't been able to believe it. His subconscious could not have tailor-made Adam Parrish -- Adam Parrish was too dusty, imperfect, and real.

And as intractable as the trees could be.

"I didn't bring you here to talk about Dick," Ronan said flatly. He wanted to set something on fire. Not here, though. Cabeswater had suffered enough at his hands.

Adam's fair brows climbed up his forehead. He looked like he wanted to say something, but thought the better of it.

"Fine," he said instead. "Thanks for the ride. We should go now anyway. I have to be at work and right now it's--"

He checked his watch. Ronan didn't have to see his reaction to know it had stopped.

"Wind-up watch not working?" he told Adam. 

He didn't want to leave yet. It was too soon. He'd expected more to change once Adam was here. This was Adam Parrish, and Ronan was seeing everything striped vivid today, and they were in Cabeswater. His Cabeswater. 

_You have to stop, asshole,_ he'd told K. _Go to your own place. That's mine. That's my mind._

 _No way,_ K had said. _We're destroying your_ mind _? Awesome._

It wasn't, though. Ronan was lucky the forest was here today. He'd thought it might be. When things were real for Ronan it seemed stronger, more capable of holding out against K's raids. Ronan had felt dismal at first, trying to dream the colorless pills, but now that he'd done it he could see that it was necessary.

But Parrish was already picking his way back to the autumn clearing, back to the world outside Ronan's mind. They were quiet on the way out and quiet climbing into the car, but in the quiet Ronan's anger simmered, so intense it was a living thing. 

Years ago, Ronan's beloved brother Matthew had come into the world. Ronan had been barely three; he hardly remembered it. But in his dreams, his father passed over the baby and its mother lying golden-haired and tranquil in her bed. He came to Ronan and whispered, "It's a match, Ronan. It's a match."

He meant a match as in _the right combination_ , but he said a match like _to start the explosion._

Months ago, Ronan had still been able to close his eyes and fall into Cabeswater and see it realer-than-real, every veined leaf of it, with no horrors to pollute it. It was not hazy and senseless, the way his older brother Declan described dreams. It was living, dangerous, and concrete. When Ronan had closed his hands on something here, he'd had only to open his eyes to find that he'd made it palpable and present. His father's son.

Not so long ago, Ronan had stepped out of the house to get his mother the mail, and found his father with his cheek caved in, his collarbone clean in the vivid mess of flesh and blood.

Because Ronan had spent so long under the influence of K's pills -- red, blue, green, all colors -- he'd forgotten how perfectly he could recreate that. 

Some moments were so vivid that they never left you. His hands shook. The car swerved. 

"Lynch!" Adam said. Ronan got it under control, but just barely. He wondered if he should let Adam drive. He wondered why nothing had happened after bringing Adam to Cabeswater -- why it hadn't been a match. Ronan Lynch could no longer dream so easily on his own. He had little that didn't come from Niall Lynch's bloodsoaked legacy or K's pills. But he had the forest. And he had this, this unnameable pull to Adam Parrish.

Why had nothing happened? Something should have happened. He had collected all the real things in his life into one place, and nothing had happened. His rage was unsolvable. He couldn't look at Adam when he left him by the side of the curb. He looked at the steering wheel instead. 

"Did you mean it?" Parrish said, once he was out of the car. "About Gansey? Why are you offering to help me with this?"

Ronan preferred not to lie, so he said nothing. He could feel Parrish shifting right outside the car window.

"Look, just keep Kavinsky out of our way," Parrish said, sighing. Then he was gone. 

But Ronan's anger was not. The BMW tore away from the curb and headed for the subdivision, and by the time he arrived the colorless pills were wearing off. He was frayed thin now because of it, but not nearly as bad as he was when they had a spree. He found K in his basement movie theater, cradling a bottle of vodka and snorting a thin line of white powder off of the popcorn machine.

He caught Ronan by the arm when Ronan leaned in for some too, dusting Ronan's sleeve with powder.

"What the fuck is this?" he said. He punched his other fist up at the ceiling and splayed it open, a perverse flowering of his fingers. Ronan's colorless pills. 

"Did you dream caffeine pills, man?" 

This was as close as K got to disapproval, but lately Ronan had him slathering it thin over everything, like a greasy film of frustrated chaos. Ronan grabbed the pills from his hand and pocketed them, then thought the better of it. He went to throw them in the trash can. He didn't know that K hadn't swapped them for something. When he came back, K was distractedly tapping the side of his nose. In his lap he had the pistol he'd dreamed up a few nights ago. He'd held it against the side of Ronan's head one morning, payback for Ronan moving the BMW.

_Click. That's the trigger. Trigger goes click. Brains go boom._

_Sure_ , Ronan had said.

_You didn't tell me you liked white trash. I should kill you just for bad taste._

_You didn't tell me you were this predictable,_ Ronan had said, closing his eyes. _Don't you want Dick Gansey to fuck_ himself _up? Didn't you tell me it wouldn't be fun if you had to do it all?_

K had cursed and dropped the gun. He hated being accused of predictability.

Apparently it was still on his mind, because now he offered up a handful of his own pills.

"Try this," he said. "Fuck the caffeine pills. Try these. This is how you do it. Let me know what you think of my execution."

"I'm all for your execution," Ronan said, but he took the pills. They were orange. The ones that had done Prokopenko in had been yellow. Ronan swallowed these down with some vodka and without further comment. He fell asleep like being shattered. He was in Cabeswater's autumn, and the bare trees hemmed him in now, stabbing the sky with their anger and betrayal.

In, out. Like a thief. That was how they did it. That was how Ronan always did it now, now that he'd forgotten how to do it the other way.

But something stopped him. Orphan Girl, faint and pale against the dark wash of trees. Ronan blinked. He hadn't seen her in months. Not since the trees had stopped talking to him.

"Ronan," she said urgently.

 _Greywaren,_ whispered the trees. _Tempora mutantur et nos mutamur in illis._

Changing. They were changing. Why?

"Listen," said Orphan Girl.

-

When Ronan woke several hours later, he reached for the colorless pills again.

-

Before Gansey was truly done for the semester, there was one last meeting with Pinter. He went there now, across a green quad brimming with boys and their expensive luggage. Gansey hardly noticed them. R. Malory had written, "What is your proof?"

And then at least fifty lines about how the longstanding cultural ineptitude of the English had translated into both their inability to locate Glendower and into a spectacularly terrible healthcare system.

And then, "I agree with you."

So Gansey had written back with what evidence he had. Then Professor Malory -- he claimed to be a professor -- had written many lines more. Additional avenues for research and diatribes on the treatment of Ned Kelly's body. Descriptions of the worst liver supplements and a very passionate aside about bird breeding. He did not seem to know how to indent or make new paragraphs. To close he wrote: "Please write to let me know if I may be of assistance. My electronic mail is the Office 365 of the university. You will have to ask which box to put it in by calling the assistance desk because I do not know, but you have my name and I wish you luck. I never check it, but I will find someone to do so. Your theory is intriguing. Very unexpected from an American!!! Best of Luck."

Gansey guessed that he was somewhere over seventy years old. But he was willing to believe that Gansey was on the right track. For that, Gansey could forgive a great deal.

He was composing a brief explanation on the fool's errand that would be calling every university in the U.K. and demanding R. Malory's email when Pinter walked in. He was not alone. Radcliffe, the Dean of Students, was with him. So was a smiling woman in a peach-colored blouse who Gansey had never seen before in his life. She introduced herself as an Amanda Taylor, and explained that she worked in Financial Aid. Radcliffe commandeered Pinter's desk and said brusquely, "We'll get your man on the line in a minute, Gansey."

Gansey watched him dial a number on Pinter's phone. Midway through he realized that it was Maitland's number.

"Do we need him?" he asked, surprised. 

Radcliffe paused. 

"I thought you'd want him," he said.

"For a counseling session?" Gansey said.

By now he could tell that it was not a counseling session. But he left it to them to say it, eyeing them all calmly. Only Taylor met his gaze, with the clear conscience of the professionally helpful.

"This is about next year," Radcliffe said. "It's early to start making promises, but given your parents' generosity while they lived--"

Gansey nodded, tolerant of this. 

"--we won't leave you out in the cold. Ms. Taylor has already taken a look at your case."

Taylor beamed at him and produced a folder. She spread it out before him, charts and pamphlets and brochures coated with the smiling faces of long-graduated students. 

She said, "Our school budget allocates a certain percentage for financial aid every year, and out of that pool I think we could certainly give you at least a partial scholarship. We haven't had the budget approved for next year yet, but financial aid is usually a steady percentage of it, and with a few adjustments to our current awards--"

"Adjustments?" Gansey said sharply. "To whose current awards?"

She flapped her hands, the sort of gesture perceived as soothing by people who had absolutely no idea what it looked like.

"That's nothing to worry about!" she said. "Most of our students typically expect to pay more from year to year, with the usual hikes in tuition--"

"Why are you hiking tuition?" Gansey said. "My family gave you a sizeable donation last year. Everyone's did."

Not Adam's. And not anyone else who had to go through Ms. Taylor's office, probably.

"We should call -- Mr. Maitland, was it?" Radcliffe said hurriedly. "He can explain things better."

"Did he propose this?" Gansey demanded. "I don't want this."

"Now, this is no time to be proud--" Pinter began.

Pride was not the issue. The issue was this new unpleasantness, sprung on him like ice dropped down the back of his shirt. It made him feel unbearably cold and hollow. He had never once considered that he would be anywhere but Aglionby next year. He had never once considered that other people might be affected if he stayed. 

"Thank you very much," Gansey said stiffly, rising. "I can't accept this. But thank you."

He barely heard their protests as he left. His chest felt tight again, the way it had when all this had first started, and he was annoyed at himself for it. Why should it feel tight, and why now? Why should he hear this buzzing; why should he find it hard to breathe? He was such a soft thing, offered so much and now at Adam's expense. He did not feel that he had the right to be upset over this.

He made it to Nino's for his shift without further incident. He'd hoped to catch Blue there, but their shifts did not overlap today. She was pulling off her apron as he came in. Her face changed when she saw his.

"What's the matter?" she demanded. Her voice was defiant. She was five feet even of sensible command. Gansey, without even realizing he was doing it, took her hand in his. 

It felt very sure and strong. He closed his eyes. For a moment the only thing in the world was the feel of her fingers clasped around his. 

He could not tell her that the only way for him to go back to Aglionby was to make life more difficult for Adam.

"When will you be free, Jane?" he said instead. "I would like to see you today."

"Today?"

"Every day," he said truthfully.

"I'll be done by the time you get off," she said. "Adam said we could start on transmissions if I came by the garage."

She and Adam together, waiting at the garage. This brought him some relief, even upset as he was. He nodded once.

"I'll be there myself, then," he said, making it a promise.

But work dragged interminably. It shouldn't have. Nino's saw less traffic once Aglionby was out of session for the summer. There was no one to mash straw wrappers into plates or leave napkins plastered in soda all over the floor. The only customers were people driving through Henrietta on their way to other places and one or two regulars who lived up the street.

But the Gansey who brought them water and listed the specials and made sure the buffet was properly stocked was a Gansey who would not be returning to Aglionby in the fall. This was final, severable from any other Gansey who had come before. The school had never meant much to him for its own sake, so the real change was that as of today he could never again be the Gansey who'd captained the crew team, who made donations, who had a mother and father and sister. 

It was a turning point. He could scarcely focus on collecting plates and stacking them in the dishwasher. He almost forgot about Professor Malory's reply, and he did not feel in control enough to pause now and answer it. Unease fogged his thoughts. He wondered what it meant to be Richard Gansey, Henrietta citizen. He wondered if he would still have to go to school at all -- surely he would and could, but the actual thought of it did not seem real. He wondered, again, what was left of him. Was there anything real to him? Or had it all been the careless, spoiled privilege of another lifetime, never knowing want and never wanting to know what it was that others faced, what it took for someone like Adam to get into a place like Aglionby?

He was grateful when his shift ended. The Camaro waited for him, impossibly solid under its ever-present coating of road dust, and somehow just sinking into the drivers' seat and catching a glimpse of his books -- tabbed and read through too many times in the past few days -- made him feel a little bit better. He was not Richard Gansey, Aglionby student. He was stranger. He was hungrier and more desperate to know reality. He was a friend to Blue and to Adam and to Noah. This was not who he had expected to be, maybe it was not yet all of who he _should_ be. But there was something sure and real in it, mingling with the pain.

He sent Malory a quick response before starting the car, and then put the key in the ignition, intending to head to Fox Way.

Then the Camaro's hood was conquered by a raven.

It couldn't be a coincidence and he said as much, low and gasping and startled into confessing it to his car and his books and the promise of Glendower, waiting somewhere beyond this terrible day. The bird was so compact, real and decidedly full of matter, that he wanted to examine it. The birds from before were tinged and ruined by memory. When he thought of them, it was with the worry that perhaps they'd been hollow, somehow unreal. This one was firm. It had dimensions.

He stepped carefully out of the car and approached it. Unlike the other ravens, it ignored him utterly.

"Hey," someone said.

Ronan Lynch sat on the curb. Because the Ronan Lynch brand was uncaring threat, there was little about his posture to indicate that he'd just spoken, let alone spoken that tersely.

"Hey yourself," Gansey said. 

He was grateful and glad that Lynch seemed to have brought Adam back safely the night before. He was cautiously concerned about whatever Lynch had been doing in the church. Beyond this, he was withholding judgment. Lynch had prompted mild disapproval, once. Perhaps not now.

"Thank you for giving Adam a ride," Gansey told him.

In response, Lynch made an impatient noise in the back of his throat. After a moment it became clear that this was not aimed at Gansey but at the bird, which flew to him and fitted itself somehow into the crook of his shoulder, like it was a part of him. 

This was only the raven Adam had complained about before. Gansey was disappointed.

"Parrish isn't here with you?" Lynch said. 

"I'm meeting him at the garage," Gansey said. "Along with a friend of ours. I think you've met her?"

It should not have been possible for uncaring to solidify, but Lynch's did, somehow. Gansey shook his head slightly. That would not do.

"Jane is a friend. Mine and Adam's. You can expect to find her where we are."

"So she's not selective."

"I don't think you should be talking," Gansey said. He turned back to his car, but before he could go Lynch said, "Did Parrish tell you?"

"I haven't had a chance to talk to him yet. He had work at the factory this morning. What was he supposed to tell me?"

"He wasn't supposed to tell you anything," Lynch said, snorting. He exhaled a smoker's exhale, long and dangerous, and Gansey caught what was unsaid.

 _He wasn't supposed to, but he will_.

"Ah," Gansey said.

He wondered what on earth Adam could say that Lynch wanted to say first. Was Lynch finally starting to see how Adam talked about him, what Adam thought of because he hung around with Kavinsky? What everyone thought of him? Gansey did not feel bad for him; he'd brought it on himself.

But sometimes you discovered that you'd never been the person you were supposed to be. There had been a Gansey, once, who had commanded Aglionby with a look, king of all that hollow money. Gansey was not that Gansey now, nor did he want to be. 

Maybe Ronan Lynch, too, had someone he'd rather not be. 

"Well," Gansey said now. "You're certainly free to tell me whatever it is, if you want to try and control the message."

Ronan Lynch's forearm sliced the air in front of him. Gansey blinked at it, perturbed. When he turned to Lynch again, Lynch looked enraged, but Gansey was tired of sudden violence from him.

"Control yourself," he said sharply.

Lynch stepped back and looked away. His bird made a worried sound into his neck. 

"I'm not like that," he told Gansey. "I don't lie."

To hear Adam and Blue discuss it, Lynch's name was synonymous with local criminal activity. So Gansey wasn't sure why he drew the line at lying. But he would take Lynch at face value for now. Gansey appreciated honesty. If Lynch was willing to give it, then that was something. 

"Tell me the truth then," he said now. It would be good to hear something truthful today, something that wasn't tinged by double-edged rewards. He climbed into the Camaro again, suddenly tired, and said, "Should we talk here? Or do you want to head to Boyd's and tell us all together? Like I said, Adam will be there."

Lynch looked unsure, and as savage and plaintive about it as a lost pitbull. But after a second he walked around the the passenger-side and let himself into the front seat, cursing fluidly about all the things he found crammed there.

"Sorry," Gansey said perfunctorily, watching Lynch try to disentangle his long legs from a mess of books and clothes. He could see the BMW parked a few spots away and wondered why Lynch was choosing to leave it behind. 

"Your car--"

"Leave it. It's not like I live in it," Lynch said. 

Gansey left it, started the car and pulled out onto the street, but he did not leave _this_ , which was to say Lynch's general Lynch-ness.

"I'm going to offer you some advice," Gansey told him, as they started for Boyd's.

"Sure," Lynch said. Gansey was briefly surprised by this easy acceptance, but then he realized that it wasn't so easy. Lynch was just temporarily occupied, snarling at Gansey's athletic bag and trying to lean over the bird in his lap to better unwind the bag's straps from around his shoes.

"You can afford it. Advice is cheap," he told Gansey when he was done with this.

"Civility also costs nothing," Gansey noted.

"Is this what you and Parrish do all day? Catalogue the shit you can actually pay for?"

"Sorry. Perhaps I wasn't clear," Gansey said. "That was the advice. I wasn't talking about money. I was talking about how you've basically cost yourself Adam's respect."

While yesterday Lynch's needling hadn't mattered, today Gansey was not in the mood for it. He was more than the money he'd had and lost. He liked to think that he'd been more even when he'd had money. And now that he had none, the worst thing was the way everything revolved around it, everyone needed it, and he was forever drawn up short by the fact that he'd had it and had never noticed how it determined everything. He wondered how many Adams had their lives carefully adjusted, quietly shortchanged, to make room for the needs of Richard Campbell Gansey III. It sickened him. 

Thankfully, Lynch kept his barbed tongue in his mouth for the rest of the drive. Gansey could not tell if this was an improvement -- he wasn't trying to hurt or upset Lynch -- but he was grateful for it nonetheless. When the Camaro had thundered over potholes thick with oil and roared its way into place in front of Boyd's, Gansey climbed out and then looked at Lynch expectantly. Lynch didn't move. Sighing, Gansey held out a hand.

Lynch didn't take it.

"Coming?" Gansey said politely.

The look Lynch turned on him could best be described as hunted. Gansey took pity on him.

"I'll go get them, then," he told him.

Boyd wouldn't be here today, if Adam had invited Blue to come. Adam would have full run of the garage to himself. Gansey had yet to earn this privilege. Gansey got Boyd's crinkled smiles and enthusiastic encouragement. Adam got actual responsibility. Gansey wasn't sure how to erode this barrier. 

He heard Adam and Blue before he saw them. His first impulse was to warn them about Ronan Lynch being present. Neither of them liked Lynch, and it would be a rude surprise to find that Gansey had brought him along. But then he caught sight of them, working together under the hood of a battered Ford. In the sickly orange-yellow garage light, Adam was lit and serious and Blue, tucked into his arms as he guided her hands to something in the bowels of the car, seemed sharper and stranger. She was proving to be much cleverer with cars than Gansey was, not that this was hard. When Gansey stepped towards them, she turned her head and asked Adam something, the top of her head touching his collarbones. Gansey swallowed hard. He felt a soft pain, like birds' wings brushing his heart. There was no space between Blue and Adam, somehow no space for _him_ , and he was surprised by how much this bothered him.

He cleared his throat. When their faces snapped to his, he thought Adam looked briefly caught out.

"At ease, Tiger," Gansey said. There was little else he could say.

"We're calling people Tiger now? Who's Tiger, him or me?" Blue demanded. 

"You are," Adam said, just as Gansey said, "Parrish, of course."

Blue looked relieved. Adam did not.

"We thought we'd try a Ford today," Blue said. "Since that's the car we have at home, anyway. And I'm starting to think yours is sort of its own thing."

Gansey nodded. The Camaro was in a class of its own, both in terms of its value to Gansey and in terms of its innate intractability.

"It will help Calla if you can fix her car," Gansey said, because he wanted Blue and Adam to know that he understood the utility in this. Blue nodded decisively, but Adam looked away. 

"I have to tell you something," he said. 

He said it to Gansey, but Blue for once did not take offense. Adam must have already told her whatever it was.

"That place I picked for us to visit. I didn't really pick it. Noah told me about it. He said there was a forest there. Some other stuff too."

Gansey didn't see a problem with that, and said so. 

"No," Adam said, shaking his head. "No, maybe not a problem. I don't know. Lynch took me there before he took me to work yesterday, and Noah was right. There was a forest."

"Now you're angry at Noah for being right about a forest?" Gansey asked. "Virginia has over five million acres of forest."

Adam shook his head again He said, "This wasn't just any forest, Gansey."

He was careful, his voice even, as he described what he'd seen. But Gansey heard the odd thread running through his words, heard the places where Adam's vocabulary failed him. Adam -- suspicious, disbelieving Adam, who would never report this if it was not true -- had found magic. Indisputable magic.

"We have to go," Gansey said immediately. "Now. Can we go now? You can close up now, right?"

Giant turtles. Sudden winter. Everything wild there, wild and enchanted as Glendower was said to have been. If you found true magic like this, then that made the possibility of magic a given, and it helped you believe in other things, greater things. How sure and true would this make Glendower, then? 

"Gansey," Blue said. He was already turning to go but he found her hand on his arm. Behind her, Adam was wiping his own greasy hands on a rag and closing the hood of the Ford.

"Why didn't Noah tell us?" Adam said. "About the magic? If he knew there was magic like this on the ley line, why didn't he say so before?"

That question had not occurred to Gansey.

"He must have had a reason," he said immediately. Noah was not deceitful.

"I think so too," Blue said, fair about it. 

But Adam shook his head again. Only slightly. But Gansey saw it.

"He might have been messing with me, and I might have found the forest by accident," Adam said. "So maybe he didn't know. But I can't think of a good reason for him not to tell us if he did."

"We can ask him, then," Gansey said. He saw no reason to speculate. If Noah had hidden this from them, Noah could tell them himself. When he bothered to show up, that was. Gansey hadn't seen him in some time, and it made something in him twist. He'd been serious, before, when he'd told the others that Noah was a comfort to him. Noah didn't have to be, but he was. 

"Let's go to the forest first and then try to find Noah," he decided, leading the others out. On the way out, he and Blue helped Adam dim the lights and secure the office, then lock up. He peppered Adam with questions about the forest as they did this. What did he mean, his watch had stopped working? Was he aware that time anomalies were supposed to accompany the ley line? 

"I don't know, Gansey," Adam said, shaking his head. "I just wanted to go get you, honestly."

Gansey stared at him, surprised and pleased. Adam looked at his shoes.

"If you found magic, who would you tell?" he asked. Not his shoes. Blue, probably.

"Gansey," she said. She said this like it was only the obvious answer.

This meant little to Blue because she lived with magic, and perhaps less to Adam because maybe even now he didn't really believe in magic. But it meant a great deal to Gansey.

"Thank you," he told them both. "I always want both of you with me. Noah, too."

There was nowhere he wouldn't take them, if he'd had a choice about it. These past few weeks, he'd learned that he was fine in his own company. He'd never truly been alone before but he wasn't bad at being alone now. Alone, he discovered that he had his mother's sense of purpose, if skewed in odder directions. He had his father's head for research, too, and if now he was reading about Welsh kings beneath a streetlight on the side of the road, that was his business. No one was there to tell him not to do this.

But the lonely calm by the roadside would have been infinitely improved by having Adam and Blue there. Blue there to prod him, as full of wonder as he always wanted to be. Adam there to be methodical and safe. Gansey had spent some time alone mapping out various points on the ley line, exploring fields and caves. All of it would have been better with his friends there.

"If this forest is as big as you say it is," he told Adam, as they headed for the car, "maybe it'll be worth it to spend a night there. I'll get more done. Maybe it will even be day when it's night there."

"I wouldn't do that. It's not always there," came a low voice to their left.

Both Adam and Blue started, but it was only Lynch. Belatedly, Gansey realized that he never had explained about bringing him along. He rubbed his bottom lip with a thumb, annoyed at himself. 

"He's with me," he told the others.

"Why?" Blue said. Lynch scowled. Gansey would have tried to explain for him, but Adam cut in.

"What do you mean, 'it's not always there'?" 

Lynch shrugged, and there was something bold and insolent in it. Because he said nothing after that, Gansey assumed that either he didn't know or he could only give them a lie.

"Let's see if it's there now," he proposed. "Do you want to come, Lynch, or should I take you back to your car?"

"You're not getting into that forest without me," Lynch said.

What a perfectly threatening way of saying he would come. Adam and Blue were already rolling their eyes at him, so Gansey did not have to. He turned to them instead. 

"Is it alright if he comes?" he asked. He hoped they would say it was. Not just for Lynch's sake, but because he hoped they would trust his instincts in bringing Lynch along.

"I'm fine with it if Blue is," Adam said, after a minute.

And Blue only said, "I'm not sitting next to him."

So they started off for the forest Lynch in the front and Adam and Blue in the back.

"What the fuck is a Blue?" Lynch said, after about twenty minutes.

-

Blue, who spent the drive united in suspicion with Adam, shifted away when they reached the mountains. It almost hurt, the way she'd been warm and there and then she wasn't.

Now she was rolling down her window and pointing out the snaking blue hills, hills she must have seen a thousand times. Adam had. He'd lived his whole life here. But she wasn't pointing them out to him.

"Now that's a sight to wash away this whole wretched morning," Gansey remarked. He stopped the car now at Lynch's behest and stepped out, and Adam could practically feel him vibrating admiration. Gansey appreciated the rustic the way someone who'd always had to live here never could. 

Adam and Lynch now led the way.

Adam thought of this place, a little bit, as _Lynch's_ place, and not simply because Lynch had first brought him here. Everything here was a little forbidding, a little too alive, even before you noticed the animals that shouldn't belong. Adam felt observed here. 

It was strange to realize that this was the same sensation Lynch sometimes gave him. 

Adam worried at the dirt beneath his nails at he walked, the path into the forest somehow easier now that he knew where he was going. Maybe he was imagining things. Ronan Lynch didn't watch Adam. Ronan Lynch singlehandedly funded the town of Henrietta through traffic tickets, stood guard over the most dangerous pharmaceutical enterprise this side of Virginia had to offer, and had paid nine hundred dollars for a tattoo to piss off his older brother. 

There was nothing in Adam to draw an eye like that. 

Matthew Lynch could be caught at anytime. He was somehow everyone's friend, everyone's confidant -- he even smiled at Adam when he saw him. Declan Lynch only dated impermanent blondes in pearls and fluttering aqua silk, his eyes roaming away like he was already looking for a better model.

Of the three brothers, Ronan was the most selective. He only liked recreational forgery and petty arson. He had millions. He'd lost millions. He would inherit millions once again, if he didn't fuck it up. He would fuck it up. He would fuck you up. He was fucked up -- had found his father's body. He broke bones like he was trying for the world record. He would never graduate. He would never be any different. He didn't care either way.

Students said it. Teachers said it. They all said it so often that even Adam, alone on the fringes of Aglionby's many groups, heard it. Always another reason to put Ronan Lynch out of his mind. Adam did not approach venomous creatures. So he felt stupid and unsure now, like he'd made a deal with a scorpion.

But Lynch had brought him here not once but twice, and said he would try to keep Kavinsky under control. Adam risked a look at him as they walked. Lynch's disinterest was a scorching thing. Adam looked away. If Lynch held up his end of the bargain, it didn't matter.

They came to the pool, and this time Adam knew it was there and could keep Gansey from walking into it. Gansey kneeled down by the edge, fascination plain in his face. 

"This is where I saw the turtle," Adam told him.

But it wasn't there. The water was so clear that they would have seen it at once, and instead they saw a colony of lively fish appear, swimming out of the eaves of the bank. Gansey put a questioning thumb to the side of his mouth.

"I thought these should be here," was all he said. Blue, meanwhile, had caught sight of the tree Lynch had pulled him away from the day before. Before, Adam had wondered if he was imagining how purposefully Lynch had pulled him away. Now he didn't wonder. Lynch pulled her away too, and made a forceful, violent motion with one hand at the trees, the same direction they'd taken before.

"Do you want to see the seasons change or not?" he asked flatly. All the magic of this place couldn't have produced a less welcoming tour guide, but Gansey only stood and nodded. 

"Yes, thank you," he said, and strode off in the direction Lynch pointed. Blue stubbornly kept pace with him. Adam wondered if he could examine the tree while they were occupied, but when he tried Lynch was there again, stubborn and immovable.

What was hiding in that tree?

Adam noted the mystery but gave it up for the time being. Not for Lynch's sake, but Gansey's, because Gansey was calling for him.

Adam caught up with him in the wintry part of the forest. Snow was falling now, though it hadn't before. Blue was in something that bared her shoulders and was riddled with holes, and in an instant Gansey was shrugging off his blazer -- worn now, but still finer than anything Adam had ever owned -- and offering it to her. It was a natural, gentlemanly, casual gesture. Blue looked at the blazer dubiously but accepted it. Adam heard her say, "Look. Those birds up there," and then heard Gansey name them chaffinches, and launch into a description of chaffinches in his old Virginia voice.

They regarded everything here with a degree of reverence and wonder that was wholly theirs, not Adam's. His sudden fury over this nearly blinded him. He stepped back, ignoring the cawing of Lynch's bird as it tried to get his attention, until he was leaning against a tree. Whatever was between Gansey and Blue was theirs, not his. And that was fine. That didn't matter. 

_I'll be out,_ he told himself again. _I'll be out. I'll be out. I'll be out._

And as he thought this, something whispered at him.

"Stop it," he told Lynch automatically.

Lynch said, "I didn't say anything."

It could not have been Gansey and Blue, though, because they were still focused on the forest. 

"Are there all four seasons here?" Gansey asked Lynch.

"No. Eleven," Lynch said wryly. 

"I thought you didn't lie."

"It's not a lie if you and I both know there are only four fucking seasons, Dick."

Gansey looked disappointed, as though for a moment he'd hoped that magic might be able to give him eleven different shades of the same forest.

The whispering came again.

It took Adam a moment to realize that it was in Latin, so he looked at Lynch again. This time Lynch was looking straight at him, his gaze heavy and unnerving.

"Stop it," Adam repeated.

"I'm not the one talking," Lynch said.

Which suggested that he could hear the talking. Adam blinked at him.

 _Actus me invito factus non est meu actus,_ sighed the whispering. Adam, being only second in the class, had to take a moment to translate. _The act done by me against my will is not my act._ He said it aloud.

The trees erupted into _sane_ and _ita vero_ and _sic_ , and Adam knew why, because Whelk had taught it to them: there was no simple form of yes. So every tree now tried a slightly different one, and that was how Adam knew it was the trees.

"That's unusual," Gansey said, evidently hearing it too. "The wind here sounds like--"

"It's the trees," Adam and Lynch said at once.

Lynch looked completely unsurprised.

"Did you know they could talk?" Adam demanded. He came away from the tree he was leaning against now, partly because it was so unexpectedly living for a tree. This was why he felt observed here. It was the trees. 

"They talk?" Blue said now, looking wonderingly at the snowy canopy above them. There was not a single hint of fear or unease in her gaze, only curiosity. 

"In Latin," Lynch confirmed quietly.

"Why?" Gansey asked. He looked both joyous and uncertain. Adam could see the next question poised on his lips. _Why not Welsh?_

But before Lynch could answer, the trees spoke up. Lynch deciphered the Latin before Adam did, evidently aware that Blue could not understand it and Gansey hadn't cared enough about the class to be able to listen with any degree of success.

"They need help," he said shortly. "A false king has taken control of the line."

Adam, Blue, and Gansey stared at him. Lynch didn't look at all perturbed by what he'd just translated. For all his snarling destruction, he seemed suited to this place, a perfect believer. His faith in the possibility of kings and magic, ley lines and talking trees, was absolute.

"A king?" Gansey said. 

Lynch nodded.

"Ask them if they know about a king named Owen Glendower," Gansey commanded.

Lynch made a face at the name but, when the answer came in a rush of sighing boughs and bitter wind, he translated without comment.

"He was woken," Lynch said, confusion playing on his face. Gansey let out a strange, broken sound, a sound Gansey was not supposed to make. Blue and Adam both moved to him.

"He was here?" Gansey said. "It was real? He was sleeping on the line?"

Lynch listened again.

"He was sleeping, and the false one woke him and took his power and the power of the line," Lynch said. "The trees didn't mean to give him the line, but at the time he appeared they had been--" 

He broke off suddenly, swearing.

"What?" Gansey demanded. "They had been what?"

Lynch's expression was feral.

"They'd been weakened," he said. "They'd been drained so much that they couldn't stop him. They were meant to have -- to have someone who could take care of this place and keep the line protected."

"And?" Gansey prompted.

"And now they have him," Lynch said. "The thief."

"A thief who woke Glendower," Gansey said hollowly. "Who took his favor."

Lynch stared at him, as though he only half-understood what was going on here. 

"Sure," he said shortly. Then, inexplicably, he looked to Adam.

Lynch had brought him here. Twice. Lynch had made a promise to look out for Gansey if Adam came here. Now, Adam realized why.

"You want us to help the trees?" he said.

Lynch nodded. Adam felt suddenly that there was no way he knew anything about this person standing in front of him. 

"If this person who took Glendower's favor is misusing it, then I don't see a way around stopping them," Gansey said suddenly and resolutely. "Neither the power or Glendower nor the power of the line should be misused."

"I'll help the trees," Blue said. Her tone was just as sure as Gansey's. They both looked at Adam. 

Adam looked again at Lynch. He expected Lynch to invoke the deal they'd made, to tell him that it was off if Adam didn't agree to be a part of this. But Lynch only looked back at him silently, baleful beneath his long lashes, like he didn't want Adam along if Adam didn't choose this himself. 

"I'll do it," Adam said. 

-

One thing Blue was unsure of was how, exactly, you helped a forest. It wasn't that she didn't want to. It just felt dubious, like stumbling on a fairy quest and discovering that you had no map. 

And that your guide was Ronan Lynch. They promised to meet him in three days to see the rest of the forest and try to make a plan. But for now, they had to head back to Henrietta. Adam had work in the evening, part of some trade he'd made with a coworker to make up the time he had missed. 

But that wasn't until the evening. There was still some time to talk together about the forest. After they had left Lynch and his bird by his car, Blue proposed that the rest of them hold a council. 

"A council?" Gansey asked. He seemed different now that he'd learned that Glendower had been awakened. But he offered her a small, peculiar smile nonetheless.

"We should definitely talk," Adam said. "We don't know what we just agreed to."

They decided to go to Fox Way. It was either that or discussing it in the Camaro by the side of the road, and Fox Way had a refrigerator full of semi-edible food and five psychic persons who could help them. Orla was out on a date and Jimi visiting some friends, but Maura, Calla, and Persephone were already gathered in the reading room when they arrived, laying cards out in patterns that looked complicated and arcane but that Blue knew were mostly dirty-minded. It was a Tuesday, which meant a slow day, and Persephone was still in her nightdress and Maura was barefoot again and Calla was nursing a mug that almost certainly held rum.

"Oh, look at that," she told Maura, tapping a card between them. "With your personality, you're pretty much only cut out to marry a mass murderer."

"That's not a prediction," Persephone said faintly. "That's just an assessment."

"I want my money back," Maura said.

Calla languidly threw a crumpled up piece of notepaper at her. Gansey stepped forward and caught it.

"Hello," he said politely, when their attention was on him. "We could use your advice on something. Blue, Adam, and myself."

"Is it weird to charge you for it because you included Blue in that list?" Maura asked.

"No," Calla said.

"Yes," said Blue.

In response, Maura shifted aside on the couch and patted the space next to her. This was something she never, ever did with Blue, this sort of dog motion, and so Blue assumed she meant it for Gansey. Gansey clearly assumed she meant it for Blue. They spent a half-minute staring at each other before Adam sighed and took the seat, dropping his head tiredly into one hand. Maura looked faintly surprised. Persephone giggled. Calla said, "Woooh, boy," and poured herself more rum.

Gansey was pulled out a spindly, ancient chair and sat on it, leaning forward to face the psychics. He outlined what they'd found. Someone taking the power of the ley line and forest. Someone waking Glendower and taking _his_ power. The same someone, someone false. Someone the trees mistrusted.

The psychics were too supernaturally-inclined to raise eyebrows at this story. Instead they made anxious tarot card houses on the side table (Maura) or grabbed palms and read them very suddenly (Persephone, to Adam) or clinked mugs (Calla, to Maura).

"If he has the line's power it means he woke it," Persephone said, when Gansey was done.

"If he woke it, that means he gave it something," said Calla.

"It's a bargain," Maura said. "You can't just undo a bargain."

"Well," Persephone said, sighing, " _They_ can. Trees aren't people. A greater sacrifice could do it."

Gansey and Adam said, at the same time, "Sacrifice?"

"To wake the line," Calla said. "Keep up."

Something occurred to Blue.

"Like Neeve?" she said now. "Was Neeve the sacrifice?"

She didn't know why she said it. It only fit, somehow, Neeve's sudden disappearance after the night of the church watch, and then this: a sudden spiraling of events. Meeting Gansey, meeting Adam. Discovering the ley line symbol, meeting the trees. Blue felt as though all of this were not simply meant to happen, but as if she was stepping into something much bigger than herself. Bigger and older and sadder somehow. She hadn't known Neeve, but she knew that this awful thought fit.

And neither Calla nor Persephone nor her mother corrected her.

With a sudden motion, as though he were neatly breaking off one end of the conversation and willing it away, Gansey stood. 

"Excuse me," he said. His voice was soft, but very final. He left the room.

Adam took his head out of his hand and stared at her. So did everyone else.

"I should get him," Blue said quickly, and followed after him. 

Gansey didn't know she'd seen him on the corpse road, couldn't know, and shouldn't. This was not about that. This was something else, some other heavy weight he carried, like his parents or the loss of his money. 

She found him sitting straight against the trunk of the beech tree, hands at his sides, eyes fixed on the canopy and the stars beyond. Holding up the world or else holding up himself.

"I was right about Glendower," he told her. 

"Yes," Blue said, settling in next to him.

"I was right and it didn't make a difference, Jane. The wrong person found him first."

"That's not your fault," Blue said, because it wasn't.

But Gansey only shrugged, a gesture so heartfelt and boyish that for a moment it was like she was looking at a different person.

"He's just some dead Welsh king," she pointed out. "You don't need him. You have a lawyer. You go to Aglionby."

His head gave a barely-there shake. Blue wasn't even sure she'd seen it. Something told her she had.

"What is it?" Blue asked sharply. 

Gansey looked at her. She was reminded of the night he'd seemed electric and unsettled, because now, again, he was different from his usual self. Now he was more anxious, more definitively young. She stopped being reminded of the electric Gansey and remembered instead the Gansey on the corpse road. She didn't like that. She grabbed his hand.

His shoulders relaxed a bit. 

"I think I have to go to public school next year, Jane," he said softly. "But maybe I can go to yours."

"Why?" Blue demanded. "Didn't your lawyer work it out?"

"Not in a way I could ever accept," Gansey said. His voice was firm, no compromise on this point. This was so different from sitting in this very same spot a few weeks ago with Noah. Nothing about Gansey seemed faded, not even in this uncharacteristic state. She didn't want to let go of his hand.

"Can I tell you something?" she asked.

"Please," he said. Something about the way he said it was powerful. If it hadn't been so powerful she might have lost her nerve, though normally she tried to be about eighty five percent nerve.

"I have a kind of curse," she told him.

She did not want to say _you will die this year._

She did not want to say _please don't die this year._

She did not want to say _I will be the reason you die this year._

But she wanted him to know. 

She said, "Every psychic I've ever met has told me that if I kiss my true love, he'll die."

Gansey shifted so that he was holding her hand closer, leaning closer, no longer holding himself up but possibly about to lift her up.

"Jane, that can't be easy," he told her.

It was Blue's turn to shrug. She'd stopped believing in true love until a few weeks ago, and even now she wasn't sure she believed in that part. Given what it meant for Gansey, she wasn't sure she wanted to.

"What if he kisses you?" Gansey said, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose. "Does it matter if you're only the initiating party?"

"You can't just cheat it by having him kiss me," Blue said. She knew only small-scale magic, homey Fox Way magic, but she knew it didn't bend as easily as all that. And anyway she didn't like that: a curse designed to make her withhold her kisses by threatening her with somebody's death.

"Yes, I guess that would be a run-around," Gansey said. "Well, what if he kisses your shoulder?"

"My shoulder?"

Blue wasn't sure if he was kidding. He drummed his fingers on the ground in a businesslike fashion and said, after a moment, "You don't think I'm making fun of you, do you? I can stop if you want, but I'm not making fun of you."

"I just don't know why anyone would want to kiss my shoulder," she said, bewildered.

"Jane," Gansey said. He didn't look at her shoulders, but suddenly Blue was acutely aware of them. She was acutely aware, too, of the lock of hair that fell over his forehead, of his arms and his high, sculpted cheekbones. Of the way he held her hand, lightly but surely.

"Just your shoulder," he said. "Would you mind?"

She wouldn't.

But he didn't kiss her shoulder. He worried his lip, that constant reminder of the more anxious Gansey living inside his skin, and said, "I can stop if this isn't--if you like Adam, or--"

The moment broke off and shattered.

"If I like _Adam_?" she said, voice rising. Suddenly it was all wrong. "Why do I have to like either of you? Because I'm the girl?"

Gansey blinked at her.

"I didn't say that. I did not say it was because you were a girl."

"But you meant it! You don't ask Adam if he likes me or you better--"

"I'd like you just as much if you were a boy," Gansey said in his presidential voice, making this statement sound very expected and reasonable. But a moment later, a little delayed, his mind caught up with his voice. Blue watched pensive surprise flit across his face.

This kind of thing seemed inapposite for a boy like him. Even now, Gansey was tidy and powerful, old Southern charm and belts patterned with small red elephants. This did not fit.

"Jesus," he said, passing a hand over his face. The hand stayed there. 

"Maybe I should ask Adam." he said, after a moment. "Who he likes, I mean. I saw the two of you today, Jane, and, well. If he likes me the way you mean, and you do as well, then that's something."

He took his hand out of hers. It had felt so comfortable that Blue had not even noticed they were still holding hands. Now he drew something in the dirt. The ley line symbol. 

"Do you know what I like?" he told her. "I like that these are three lines, Jane. And they meet at three points. In three different ways. But they _meet_."

"Oh," Blue said.

She understood. There was something fraught about the three of them. Blue was never sure if she was jealous of Adam or just wanted him to like her. But she wanted him here and she wanted Gansey here. She even wanted Noah, with his strangeness and his disappearing. There was little about their friendship that was casual or normal and she didn't want it to be, and somehow what Gansey was tracing in the dirt seemed to summarize it perfectly.

"Do you want to kiss my shoulder?" she asked.

"Yes, Jesus," he said wildly. Now he did look and Blue realized that she was wearing the green knit she'd made, that showed quite a lot of shoulder. So that explained that.

"Do you want to kiss Adam?"

The delay this time was much smaller.

"Yes."

"I can't kiss either of you," she informed him.

He groaned but broke it off, making it oddly gentlemanly. 

"God. I won't do it if it upsets you, Jane. I won't kiss you or him."

"I can watch you kiss him though," Blue pointed out. "If he wants that."

She had no idea if he did and it was starting to worry her. She couldn't seem to think of Adam as straightforwardly as she could Gansey. Adam seemed like he should be easier, but the more she learned about him the more she realized he wasn't. Blue wasn't sure if she wanted him to kiss Gansey for her or if she wanted him to want to kiss _her_. She didn't want to be left out.

She couldn't disentangle these thoughts; there wasn't time. Adam appeared at the back door and came towards them, silhouetted in the light from the house. He wore his usual terse expression, somehow magnified.

"The blonde one -- Persephone?" he said. "She wanted to read my palm. But I've got to be at work in about an hour. I figured I'd come take my leave."

"If I drive you you'll get there faster," Gansey told him. "And you can stay longer."

Adam shook his head. In the dim light he was hollowed and serious, slender where Gansey was broad, everything on the outside of him too fragile and too thoughtful. Blue suspected that his inside did not match either of those things.

"You can stay and we'll both go over with you," she told him now. 

Adam shook his head again.

"It's fine," he said, in a voice that could not hide his roots and so could not hide that it was not fine. "I get it. You two--"

He waved vaguely at them, long fingers casting eerie shadows.

"God. We two what?" Blue said. She didn't want to have the same fight twice in a row, but it looked like she was going to have it.

"Come on," Adam said, rolling his eyes. "Don't act like after I left with Lynch yesterday you two didn't--"

"We didn't _what_?"

"I would also like to know what we did," Gansey put in politely.

"You wanted to be left alone with her, Gansey!"

" _Excuse me_ ," Blue said. 

"I wanted you to get to work," Gansey said. "I wanted Ronan Lynch to help you."

"Exactly," Adam said, like this was all the proof he needed. "Ronan Lynch."

"Who is better than we thought he was," Gansey pointed out. "I'll admit that I never would have spoken to him before, but I'm glad to discover that he's better than I thought."

"So what," Adam said flatly. "You discovered that about all of us. You never would have spoken to any of us before."

Adam was speaking out of jealousy, led by anger. They all knew it. But this struck true. Blue could see the way it hit Gansey.

"Jesus, Parrish," he said, closing his eyes. "Shelve your inferiority complex for _two minutes_ , will you? I'm grateful to have you now. Isn't that enough?"

"Inferiority complex?" Adam said. "Fuck you."

He turned away so quickly that Blue hardly realized he was doing it, and though she knew this volatile, unlikeable Adam had not sprung from nowhere -- that there were reasons and experiences that had made him this way -- she couldn't condone it. She was up and after him before he made it back into the house.

"Hey!" she said. "You don't get to accuse us of making out like that's a crime. You don't get to act like you should have an opinion on it at all. You're being an asshole."

Adam made an aborted, violent movement. Blue stepped back involuntarily. She could see in an instant that he hadn't meant to make it, but that didn't make it right.

" _Parrish_ ," Gansey said. He'd seen it too.

"Forget it," Adam said. Blue didn't want him to come any nearer and he didn't, seeming to realize this. But he was trapped between them. Blue was blocking his way back to the house.

"You don't get to decide whether we can make out of not," she repeated. Her eyes were wet and her voice was high and she hated it. "Why are you acting like an asshole all of a sudden? Do you even know what we were talking about before you got here?"

Of course he didn't. How could he? Blue didn't want to reward him for this. She wanted him to know that this kind of thing was wrong and that he had no right to act like this about who she kissed, and when. But she felt like he owed it to them to prove that he could go beyond his anger. Gansey would want Adam to prove that he was more that that. So Blue wanted to demand this of Adam. 

She steadied her chin.

"Show him," she told Gansey. 

Gansey stared her, surprised. So did Adam. 

"Maybe you're jealous of me, but I think Jane is very jealous of you," Gansey told Adam quietly. "And for the record? I was a fool not to talk to you before, Parrish."

He seemed very vulnerable when he stepped up to Adam. Blue saw it. She thought Adam saw it, too, though it didn't seem to make Adam less angry. Gansey was bravely leaning in, but it would not be enough.

Abruptly, Blue stepped forward as well and took Adam's hand. 

"I'm going to tell you the same thing I told him," she told Adam. "I can't kiss anyone. Ever. I don't want to. My whole life, every psychic I've ever met has told me that I'll kill my true love if I kiss him. So I don't do that."

Adam blinked at her.

"Gansey said that maybe it wouldn't count if people kissed my shoulder," she explained, awkwardly, because it still seemed like an awkward proposition. "So, um. I wouldn't mind that."

Then, in a rush, because it was better than trying to make excuses for him, because she wanted him to show that he could come down from this, that she and Gansey weren't stupid to trust him:

"Kiss my shoulder?"

Adam looked wary, somehow frightened. He glanced quickly at Gansey and then down at her, unsure.

"I--" he said, but he could not finish the thought. Blue saw his pale lashes flutter rapidly. When he finally did it, it was a clumsy, boyish thing, just the press of his chapped lips against her bare skin. 

But in the moonlight his face was feral. 

"Do you want me?" he asked Blue.

"Some of you," Blue said truthfully. "Not you when you're being an asshole."

Now Gansey took his shoulder gently and pulled him in, his touch just as light and guiding as it had been when he'd held Blue's hand. Blue realized that it was light because Gansey, regal as he was, sure as he was, was always somehow asking if it was alright to do this kind of thing. She put her hand on the small of his back to encourage him.

"Is it okay if he kisses you?" she asked Adam.

Adam looked down at her wildly. 

" _He_ wants me?" he said. He looked as if he'd never seriously considered the possibility before. He must never have heard Gansey mention the name Adam Parrish.

"Who wouldn't want you, Tiger?" Gansey said.

And when Adam gave a jerky, surprised nod, Gansey pulled him in and kissed him.

-

Adam Parrish was different when Ronan picked him up a few days later.

This was a difference beneath the skin, but Ronan had dreamed this boy so many times that he could see it. Dreaming the way Ronan could, the way Ronan was supposed to be able to, meant knowing every change, understanding instinctively the parts that were true. That was what Ronan had been able to do without penalty or assistance, once.

He met Adam now at a demolition yard halfway out of town. Adam had provided the address. Gansey and their friend Blue worked later than Adam did today, and it made no sense to wait until they were done. Ronan and Adam would go back to the forest alone and try to get what instructions they could out of the trees.

For the first time in months, the trees were talking to him. Cabeswater was his dream, and so a part of his mind, but Ronan had been cut off from that part for so long now that black fury would tinge all his attempts to understand what had to be done. He needed Adam here because Adam wouldn't face Cabeswater the same way. He needed Adam here because Adam's pull on him was wholly Ronan's, part of Ronan's wants and Ronan's mind. 

"Don't hate yourself," Orphan Girl had begged. "Don't hate us."

Ronan didn't, or at least he didn't hate this part of himself, the part that watched Adam out of the corner of his eye as Adam climbed into the BMW. He couldn't hate that part. It was the only part of Ronan that still felt real. 

And the trees had asked for Parrish. They knew by now that Ronan alone would be no help to them.

Parrish was more methodical with them this time. 

"Are there places where the trees are louder?" he asked Ronan. "Does the forest speak other languages?"

"Arbores loqui latine," Ronan said.

Adam didn't pause. "Does the forest understand English, though? It seems like it does."

Cabeswater murmured that it could, which covered that topic. Ronan didn't need to speak for it. It was ancient and magical, a great storm of power that had never been meant to be tapped out. For a long time, Ronan had assumed that he'd inherited it from his father, that it was tied to Niall somehow. Now he wasn't sure. Draining the forest with K hadn't made Niall disappear. Niall was an earthquake, building on the richter scale all his life until it became too much. You did not forget something like that so easily.

But Ronan didn't want to think about that now.

Adam had a worn backpack with him, the same one he brought to school. He picked a spot on the grass a decent distance from any tree and sat down, then pulled out a battered notepad and pencil. He had clearly worked out what he wanted to say to the trees beforehand, because he didn't pause in asking any of it, just nodded and adjusted as he went along, methodical about it.

"I didn't catch that," he said at one point. "What does that mean?"

It took Ronan a moment to realize that he was asking him.

"Means you should have paid more attention to Whelk," Ronan said, rolling his eyes. "I'm not your interpreter."

Adam very deliberately repeated the question to the trees. It made Ronan suck in a breath through his teeth. He wanted to ignite something and watch it go off. He wanted to know what was different about Adam Parrish. For a moment he thought there might be something different about him, but there wasn't. He hadn't taken any pills today. That was the only thing. 

"You used to be able to do it on your own, without any help," Orphan Girl had insisted. 

"Well, I fucking can't anymore, okay?" Ronan had said. 

But he wanted to be able to. He knew there were still real things in the world without the pills, anyway, because one was sitting on the grass in front of him.

"I didn't show you the summer," Ronan told him now.

"We're _in_ the summer," Parrish said. "It's almost June."

Stupid didn't suit him. Ronan touched the toe of his boot to Adam's knee, staining his already-stained coveralls with mud.

"You know what I mean," Ronan said.

Adam stared up at him, so elegant that Ronan wanted to hit something. 

"How did you learn about this place?" Adam asked.

"I've been coming here all my life."

"You're from around here?" Adam said.

"Not like you are," Ronan said, and watched Adam flinch in response.

But it wasn't a lie. Ronan was from the Barns, sloping green fields tangled with ivy and privacy and summertime death. He suddenly wanted to be back with K, pale as a corpse, not here with Adam Parrish, brown as dirt. He wished he'd taken the pills today. Any pills. He thought of Prokopenko downing a flashy cocktail of colors, and K holding up his hands afterwards.

_Shit. Whoops. My bad. Mea fucking culpa. Come on, man. It wasn't intentional. I can fix it, anyway._

"Whatever," Ronan said now. "Stay here and learn about Cabeswater in the dumbest way possible. I'm going to the summer."

But he didn't. He went back to the BMW first, hoping against hope that he'd missed something when he'd cleaned it out in anticipation of picking up Parrish. It didn't have to be pills; it could be anything from K's cabinet of wonders. Powders. Crystals. Ronan wasn't picky. There was none of that, though. In the trunk there was a bottle of whiskey, stolen from some fundraising event he'd gone to with Declan and Matthew months ago, back when Declan had still been inviting him to these things. Declan had moved on now to pointless voicemails about Aglionby and the inheritance Ronan could now expect to lose. Ronan wasn't sure why he hadn't deleted them. Declan couldn't point fingers in this; his hands weren't remotely clean.

He took the bottle where the light was wildest and most mysterious, where every trunk was patterned with blood-red ladybugs. There, against the battered husk of the Mustang, he unscrewed the top and took a swig.

"People die of alcoholism, you know," Noah said.

"Cool ghost fact," Ronan told him. "Not you, though, right? Somebody already bashed your face in."

He hadn't told Adam about Noah, because Adam would only tell Dick Gansey and Blue Sargent, and Noah might be a ghost but Ronan would not expose him like that. Noah appeared slowly now, little by little, taking his time. Ronan let this happen. As long as Noah's form was faint, Ronan wouldn't have to see the worry in his expression.

He hated that K had taken Noah's ID. 

_What were you going to do?_ K had said, laughing. _Report it to the cops? 'Sorry officer, somebody murdered a kid in my brain forest'?_

Ronan wouldn't have reported it unless Noah had asked him to. 

"Hey! He stole some of my car, too!" Noah said. Now he was fully visible and very upset, running his hands over the Mustang and forgetting that he'd already realized this. Noah was like the forest. Either time tripped him up, or else he tripped up time. 

He rifled through the Mustang, making upset noises, skittery as a field mouse. Ronan took a few more swigs as he listened. Noah was calming. He didn't change. He rewound and replayed pieces of himself. As long as they weren't his death, Ronan was fine with it.

Noah stopped now and flopped next to him, a rumpled thing in the grass. 

"Do you have those fizzy things again?" he asked wistfully, staring at the bottle in Ronan's hands.

Three months after finding Noah, two months before losing his ability to dream things without K's pills, Ronan had dreamed small marbles like unstable universes, whirring and shaking and highly combustible when combined with the right kind of liquid. He and Noah had practiced dunking them in soda bottles to make rockets. The trees hadn't liked it. Noah had been delighted. He was a ghost; it was his job to haunt. He didn't care about the trees. In this alone he was like K, who he refused to show himself to or who couldn't seem to see him -- Ronan hadn't been able to determine which. 

They'd only set off the rockets the one time but Noah always cycled back to it, eternally teenaged. Ronan couldn't blame him for fixating on it. He'd liked the stupid small-scale destruction. With K everything had to be big, flashy, shitty. A part of Ronan missed being dumber and yet better, back when Niall had been alive and Declan had been a brother and not the chief enforcer of their father's will. 

Now they heard the sounds of voices. Adam and his friends. Ronan set the bottle in the grass next to Noah and stood just in time to see them enter the clearing. 

"A car," Gansey said. "Here?"

Blue took in a sharp breath.

Adam said, sounding stunned, "A red Mustang."

His face was uncomprehending for a moment, but then he saw Ronan and said, "Who's is this? Do other people know this is here? How long has it been here?"

Seven years, give or take a few. Ronan couldn't remember the dates on Noah's ID. Noah, still splayed in the grass behind the car, gave a small giggle. Ronan shifted nonchalantly enough to kick him without making it seem strange.

"Ow," Noah whispered.

But Ronan could understand why Adam seemed upset. The Mustang made a desolate picture, a car stalled midway, old cigarettes and bags of potato chips in the glove box, dashboard dim and dust-covered. Ronan liked Noah, but hated looking too long at his car. He'd started it up when he first found it, before he'd found Noah's body. The odometer had sputtered awake and displayed less than five thousand miles.

"The owner left it here," he told them all now. "Key's still in the ignition, if you want to look."

Adam did want to look, pulling open the drivers' side door and rifling through the glove box, then under the seats as if he were looking for something. When this yielded nothing he began to inspect the outside as if that could give him a clue.

"It's been gutted," he told Ronan accusatorially. 

Ronan couldn't help that. K liked the occasional trophy.

"Did you know this was here?" Gansey asked Ronan now. "What can you tell us about it. One of our friends mentioned--"

"No," Ronan said flatly.

This was Noah's, not his. Cabeswater was Ronan's to share. The Mustang was not. 

But Noah tapped on Ronan's foot, annoying about it.

"Show them," he said. "Show them. Dig me up if you have to."

Ronan gawked at him.

"Hey, we asked you a question!" Blue said now, irritated at Ronan's lack of explanation. But Ronan was watching Noah slowly fade.

"Tell them," he was whispering. "Take them over and show them. Please?"

Before Ronan could hiss his refusal, he was gone. Ronan kicked at the spot where he'd been. His rage was complete.

"You want to know whose car it is? Come on," he said, starting for the grave and hearing them follow.

He'd found Noah farther from the car than had made any logical sense. Had he walked to meet his attacker? Had he been dragged? If he'd been dragged, why hadn't he been buried?

Noah had never told him what had happened and Ronan had never asked. This was only more that Ronan didn't want to touch. But he'd buried Noah close to where he'd found him, in the center of a ring of concealing willows. He'd dreamed the gravestone himself, the last great thing he'd managed before dream creation had become impossible without some kind of pharmaceutical assistance. He hadn't gotten the name right on the first try. K had already claimed the ID, and Ronan had been rushing to get the bones out of sight before he took those, too. 

The first attempt had said _Noah Czernski_. 

Then Noah had showed up to correct it.

Now it said _Noah Czerny_. Ronan still had no idea how you pronounced that. 

"Is this a joke?" Adam demanded. 

"If it is, it's a sick one," Blue said. She looked both miserable and furious.

"No," came the answer, from the space around the gravestone. Noah came into view very slowly. The smudge came first, like a sick Cheshire cat parody.

"I told you I was dead," Noah said. "I told you."

He poked at his face again and for an instant it looked exactly like what it was: the place where his skin had first cracked, where his blood vessels had burst, where the bones had been driven up into his brain. It was a visceral, horrible sight. Ronan looked away, overcome. 

There was no way around a death so violent. Noah's death had had some mad purpose. Not just a death. A murder. 

Gansey was the next to speak. He spoke like it pained him.

"Who did this?" he said.

 _Falsum regis_ , screamed the trees. _Falsum regis._

Noah, balanced on his gravestone, traced something on his knee.

"He was my friend," he said.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Please note that the rating has gone up and that there are new warnings! If you're worried about diving into this chapter, feel free to email/PM me. I'm happy to summarize what happens to anyone who doesn't feel up to reading the details.

"I want all of us to discuss this," Gansey said.

So they went to the nearest eating establishment, an ice cream parlor halfway along the mountain. The ice cream was not spectacular, nor had Gansey really expected it to be, but spoons dug in with unusual dedication and every pair of eyes was fixed on the bowl in front of it.

Except for Noah's. He didn't eat. Now Gansey didn't have to ask why.

He turned to his journal, spread open on the table before him. Adam had wordlessly offered up his notes, and now Gansey folded these into the few empty pages left in the back. Then he leafed through newspaper clippings and maps and found first the page on ley line apparitions, then the page on suspended time.

He wasn't sure what to put down at the moment, so he wrote 'ghosts' on the second page and circled it, then made a note that this corresponded to the page on apparitions. On the apparitions page, he wrote, with finality: 'Noah Czerny.'

Noah, currently ignoring the ice cream Ronan Lynch had ordered for him, doodled a small grave for himself in the journal. Gansey let him.

On the other side of the table, Adam was still fixated on his ice cream. His remove was impenetrable. Ronan Lynch was the opposite. He looked on the verge of hitting something. And Blue was -- subdued.

That was not Blue. Gansey held his hand out to her under the table. She took it. Over the past few days, the allure of Blue's hand had not dimmed but had gained some competition: the tip of her ear, the small of her back, the line of her calves, which had made Adam, on one memorable occasion in the garage after hours, bite off and swear and say, "Oh god," in the most disbelieving Henrietta tones.

Gansey was learning that touching undid Adam completely. But it centered Blue. Though he could often feel the nervous hummingbird-flit of her heart against his own body, though she was by far the most cautious of the three of them, the likeliest to demur because her mother couldn't know, because Maura would be disappointed, because of the kissing thing --

In spite of all this, she was a centered and powerful creature when they touched her, when she touched them. Gansey hoped now that holding his hand would help. It seemed to. Her eyes flickered up to him and he bit back the urge to kiss her. He wished she could be kissed. He would settle for touching noses. It just didn't seem at all appropriate to do either at the moment.

Adam spoke up.

"Noah, you have to tell us who it is." 

They still didn't have a name. 

Noah added a small Camaro to the grave. Gansey thought it was a Camaro. He wondered why the Camaro and not a Mustang. Next to Noah, Ronan Lynch shredded sugar packets with abandon, ever the worst customer in any dining establishment.

"You have to tell us," Adam repeated, putting his spoon down now and staring across the table at Noah. "We can't ignore this. We have to figure out who it is and report them to the police."

Lynch snorted. 

"The police aren't going to be able to stop anybody who can take control of Cabeswater and take over Dick's wish king."

"Welsh king," Gansey corrected automatically.

"We don't even know what it means that he has Cabeswater--"

"It means _we_ don't have _shit_ , Parrish--"

"--or what he wished for, or--"

Blue squeezed Gansey's hand.

"Hello!" she said. "This isn't helping."

Gansey wasn't sure what would help. Glendower had been here, powerful, sacrosanct. And now he wasn't. His power was now at the disposal of Noah's murderer. It was despicable. For a moment, Gansey felt stung and useless.

But he steadied one hand on his forehead and collected himself, speaking over what was now a three-way argument.

"We have to be cautious," he said. "We need ground rules. Rule one. None of us goes back to the forest alone until we know more."

"Fuck you, Dick," Lynch said, rolling his eyes. "I've been going there since before you knew about it."

"I'm serious," Gansey said. "Maybe you want to be a big man and put yourself in danger, but I don't see why. You're with us in this now. Noah's our friend, and he's yours too by the looks of it. And he's --"

"Dead," Noah supplied.

"Thank you," Gansey said, though being relieved of saying it didn't help with knowing about it. "You wanted us to help get rid of this person who seems to have control of the line. Now we know he's Noah's murderer, so we have even more reason to help you. But you have to stand with us."

Lynch broke off, cursing over his shoulder, but there seemed to be a general agreement to this cursing, at least compared to his earlier bouts of it. Adam rolled his eyes, but Gansey waited until Lynch was done and was rewarded with a brief nod.

"Right," Gansey said. "Well. Obviously we need to figure out who it is, and Noah won't or can't tell us, so we start with whoever his friends were at Aglionby. Yearbooks. Research. We do this carefully. I don't want anyone here getting hurt."

"Noah's dead," Lynch said.

"More hurt, obviously," Blue snapped.

Adam said, "What's more hurt than--"

"He was my friend," Noah said again, privately now, to Gansey. "He was a lot like you."

That wasn't at all what Gansey wanted to hear. 

Though he knew what Noah was, he couldn't stop seeing Noah as Noah. Everything was boy-shaped, everything looked very real. There was dirt beneath his nails and his forearms were so white Gansey could see the purple-blue veins. 

This was his friend. This was the person who'd first helped him. And yet Gansey had nothing to say that could make this better. 

He closed his eyes for a moment. With Adam, he'd hated himself for coming in too late, without the resources to help. With Noah, it was worse. Nothing he could have done would have stopped this. The ugliness was seven years old, and far too terrible for money to fix. That did not help Gansey feel better. It only made him feel less worthy of what Noah had given him.

Noah's cold hand found his, a complement to Blue's warm one.

"It's okay," he said.

"Really?" Ronan Lynch demanded from across the table. Surprisingly, Adam did too, though with less heat and more exhaustion in his tone.

"No," Noah said.

Silence fell. Gansey looked down at Noah's hand in his. He couldn't stop thinking about what it would be like to spend seven years unable to wash the dirt out from under your fingernails.

"I have to get home," Blue said now. "There's a scrying session. Plus probably a talk on not kissing anybody."

They hadn't told Maura Sargent what was going on, but she wasn't a stupid woman.

"I'll drive you," Gansey said. "Adam?"

Adam nodded. He'd come with them. Noah obviously would. That left Lynch.

"I'll see what I can do about the yearbooks," was all Lynch said. Gansey hadn't been asking him specifically about it, but now he belatedly realized that, of course, the three Lynch brothers boarded at Aglionby year-round.

"Thank you," he told him sincerely. But Lynch was already halfway to the door, leaving behind a bowl of chocolate ice cream, soggy napkins, and carefully-destroyed condiments. Making a face, Gansey tried to separate out the worst of it and wad it into a napkin for the convenience of the wait staff. Then he led the others to the door.

Noah made it as far as Fox Way, but when Blue left, he did as well. Gansey walked Blue to the door and then returned to find Adam blinking at the spot where Noah had been.

"Energy," Adam said faintly. 

"What?" said Gansey.

"Blue has it. He doesn't," Adam said. "He's more -- more _more_ when she's around. Isn't he?"

This was true. Gansey couldn't understand how neither of them had spotted it before. They'd assumed that Noah's vanishing was an intentional thing, but maybe it wasn't. Clearly it wasn't. Gansey had asked him once where it was he went. Noah had said, _when I'm not with you, I'm not._

Now, as Gansey started the car, Adam climbed into the front seat. Gansey was suddenly glad that Adam was here, grateful that Adam had a few hours until his next job and was not making any plans to leave or rest or eat or do any of the things Adam should probably do instead of wasting his time with Gansey and the Camaro, talking about a king Gansey would never wake and a conquered ley line neither of them knew much about.

"What now?" Adam said, leaning into the battered leather seat and looking at him. His face was strange in a way Gansey never seemed to tire of examining.

What now? Eat or rest or do something useful. But after the day they'd had, Gansey didn't want to do any of that. He brought the car to a stop on one of the quieter backroads, pulling off into a small clump of trees where they wouldn't be seen from the road. Then he turned back to Adam.

"What do I do?" he asked.

About Glendower, about that talking forest. About having no family and no means and now no Aglionby. 

_Tell me what I should do, Adam_.

"There's nothing we can do," Adam said, closing his eyes. "Not about Noah."

But after a moment he shifted, turning his whole body towards Gansey. He moved quickly. Adam was a creature of sudden, decisive ambitions. When he put his mind to something, he did it. He grabbed for things beyond his reach and held on hard. Not for Adam, the leisure of the carelessly rich.

So everything about him was a little awkward when he climbed over into the drivers' seat where Gansey was, straddling him. It was a tight fit. Gansey could feel the outline of everything through their clothes, and Adam's knee caught on the door handle for a few seconds, before he adjusted himself.

"Is this alright?" he asked, when they were more or less settled.

"Of course," Gansey said softly.

This was the first time they'd tried this alone, without Blue. Gansey wasn't as sure of the rules with Adam. With Adam he feared he might tarnish something irrevocably.

Adam tipped his chin up.

"Look at me?" 

In his long Henrietta voice, it could never be quite the command Adam wanted it to be, but it was enough. Adam's eyes were china-blue and strange beneath his fair brows, and not for the first time Gansey marveled at the old quality to his face, serious as a tintype print.

Kissing Adam blessedly required no rules. He was hungry about it, focused and intense. Gansey took the chance to sneak his hands up Adam's shirt. Adam was, as always, covered up. Gansey didn't want him to be, but he didn't want to overstep either, so he settled for stroking the skin of Adam's back, pulling him in closer. Adam pressed down as he did, rolling down his hips so that he rubbed Gansey's dick through his khakis. It felt marvelous, friction and heat, good in a way Gansey couldn't deny.

Adam sucked his neck, adding an edge of wet hurt that somehow made it better. He kept rubbing, increasing the friction along Gansey's length. Adam was more enthusiastic than coordinated about this, but the result had promise. He was as hard as Gansey was, and so every movement built on the last, intense and nearly painful. Gansey's most stubborn, difficult friend, strong and hard against him. With Adam he was always caught like this, stripped to his core and his most unbending elements, left wanting to prove that _Me too, Adam. See? We're not so different._

He didn't want to be any different from Adam. He wanted there to be nothing separating them, though everything did. He put a hand on Adam's hip and leaned back into the seat to better match his pace. He arced his own hips up so that he could rub back, add to this movement between them. 

Adam opened his eyes briefly and shuddered, like he hadn't been expecting this. His whispered Gansey's name, long about the vowels. Surprised. It broke something in Gansey, that Adam Parrish could never seem to conceive of Gansey responding to him this way.

"Come on, Tiger," he managed. Now both hands were on Adam's hips and Gansey moved them together, keeping the rub going. He was so hard it was painful, and half-ashamed of how shameless he was, arcing into Adam like this. But the reward was well worth it: Adam Parrish, his. Adam Parrish, not distant but dramatically present, not hurt for once but so pleased that his breath came in stutters, his serious mouth whispered _Gansey, Gansey Gansey._

It took very short time for this to undo Gansey completely. He came first and in his khakis, elated and embarrassed at himself. He buried his groans in Adam's neck. Adam was still hard.

"Adam," Gansey said softly, breathing out and trying not to think of how sticky he was. "Should I do you?"

But now reality intervened. With Adam pulling back, with the mess in his khakis, he had to focus on more than this moment. He felt a chilly breeze, an excess of light. Adam's knee had caught the door again at some point. Their movements had popped it open. Gansey hadn't even noticed. Outside, Henrietta buzzed and chirped at them, boughs waved, ladybugs milled on the windshield. Gansey blinked at it.

Adam started laughing. It was a new sound from Adam. Gansey immediately adored it without reservation. Adam's whole face changed when he was like this. 

He climbed off of Gansey gingerly and stepped outside, then said, "Sorry. You should change. Is it okay, doing this without Blue?"

"I certainly hope so," Gansey said, climbing out himself and popping open the backseat door to get at his clean clothing. "I like you as much as I like her."

Adam's ears reddened. This still surprised him. Gansey couldn't bear that. Was it that Adam still thought they were too different? Was it admiration, or alienation, or both? Whatever it was, Gansey wanted none of it. He tucked a strand of dusty hair behind one ear just to do it, hoping this was alright. Adam didn't protest. He sat on the drivers' seat and watched Gansey change. Gansey wasn't self-conscious; he'd changed with the crew team for years, and he knew he wasn't an ugly boy. But he worried now about what this meant, if something in Adam's stubborn brain would look at him and twist it and make it yet another difference between them.

Adam wasn't looking, though. He was seated awkwardly, legs spread wide. He was still hard.

"Parrish," Gansey said sharply, once he'd pulled on his underwear and hung the new khakis on the car door. "Now you." 

He made a brisk motion with his hands. Jeans off. Adam made a face.

"I want to," Gansey said. "Come on."

He helped Adam pull off his jeans. Naked, Adam put a hand on his bare, flat stomach and looked away again. He had bruises on his hip and a scar on one thigh, but a colony of lovely birthmarks on the other. He was uncircumcised. Gansey eyed his penis speculatively, thick and long and unusual. He'd always liked the _look_ of a penis, but had assumed that this was some kind of inner masculinity calling, a sort of powerful Gansey man admiration for other men, nothing sexual, just noblesse oblige applied to genitals.

It wasn't that at all. It was decidedly sexual. What a strange relief it was to realize that.

"Come on," Adam said now, more like he wanted Gansey to stop looking than because he wanted Gansey to do anything. 

"Turn around," Gansey ordered, bringing a hand to the small of Adam's back. Adam eyed him suspiciously but did this, leaning with his elbows on the Camaro. The view was spectacular. Gansey had always liked asses, though he'd assumed they were somehow uniquely feminine. They were not. Adam had a fair, rounded ass, and when he leaned with his legs spread like this Gansey could catch a view of his balls, round and promising.

Gansey dropped the ruined khakis on the grass and kneeled on them, then shifted one of Adam's legs forward and took his balls in hand, licking and feeling their weight.

"Gansey!" Adam said, starting forwards. 

It was hard to make himself stop. Gansey wanted to follow the curve of Adam's ass, find his hole and tongue it. He'd always liked using his mouth on girls, and he didn't see why it should be any different with Adam. 

Except that Adam was self-contained and vicious about his choices, his independence. Gansey still wasn't sure if there was any easy trust here. He wanted it so badly, but he could never presume it. 

"Is this alright?" he, pulling back with reluctance. 

Adam looked down at him, stunned.

"Do you really want to?"

"Yes," Gansey said simply. 

Really what he wanted was to know he was pleasing to Adam, pleasing to Blue. Pleasing to all the people he loved. And to feel that they were safe and together and _his_. This was a start to that. This would do. This was necessary, having Adam spread before him like this, for once not fighting him. 

"Okay," Adam said. "Okay."

And he leaned against the Camaro again. He was so uncharacteristically trusting, a rare gift from Adam. Gansey rested against him for a moment, relieved and glad for it, and then leaned in and tongued him, feeling more victorious than he had in weeks.

-

Ronan had until June first and that was it. One of the office women came by with some boxes.

"For your things," she said stiffly. "As a courtesy."

She didn't look like she was expecting thanks and Ronan didn't offer any. She left. Behind her, Declan emerged from the hallway. He was dressed for dinner or an interview or a senatorial campaign. His mouth was a thin slit. Non-discerning persons would have called it a smile. Ronan knew better. 

"Did you talk to the priest?" Declan said. 

Hellos were not necessary among these two Lynch brothers. Ronan preferred it that way. The only language he and Declan had in common now involved cut lips and shattered wristbones. Declan had taken the hit last time. He made his cast look like a war badge. 

"The least you could have done was held on a year," he told Ronan now. "I move out in August. Then Matthew's alone."

Every hair on the back of Ronan's neck stood, electric with fury. The one thing he and Declan still agreed on was Matthew above all, and it was a special low blow to suggest that Ronan would hurt him with this. 

"He's not alone," he snarled, moving in for Declan's shattered wrist. "I'll be at St. Agnes. I'm not going anywhere."

"That's right," Declan managed, shoving him off and using his weight to force Ronan against the window. "That's you. Not going anywhere, Ronan."

The ensuing scuffle was fast and dirty as only a Lynch fight could be. Total war, both instinctive and clever. Clothing ripped, noses bled, injuries were taken advantage of. Declan's tie took the worst damage somehow, which left Declan cursing fluidly. The serviceable wooden dorm furniture thankfully withstood battering. When they'd moved Ronan out of the triple room he'd shared with his brothers (because this kept happening) Aglionby had quietly provided him with Lynch-proof effects (for this exact reason). 

"Guys?" came Matthew's voice from the door. 

This was the only thing that could make them break apart, bruised now on the outside as they were on the inside. Ronan spat blood now, but he did so appreciatively. He didn't mind making Declan look more honestly himself than usual.

"Guys, I think she likes me," Matthew said. 

He held Chainsaw in both hands. She was shredding the front of his shirt with her beak. She wasn't careful with Matthew and he wasn't careful with her, so Declan made disapproving sounds that Ronan ignored. Ronan entrusted Matthew and Chainsaw to each other routinely. Chainsaw would let him know if anything happened to Matthew. And keeping her with Matthew meant that she was unlikely to come into contact with K. 

Ronan moved forward now to take her. She was warm and fluttering in his hands, and Matthew followed after, tripping onto them both and trapping them in a hug, graceless about his affection. Chainsaw gave a kerah of disapproval and pecked wildly at every inch of skin available, Ronan's and Matthew's. Ronan winced but did not back away.

"Are you going to be okay?" Matthew asked.

Declan made a noise of perfect disbelief.

Ronan wouldn't lie, not to Matthew, so he settled for switching Chainsaw to one hand, swinging the other over Matthew's shoulder and offering Declan the middle finger.

"I'm moving to St. Agnes," he told Matthew. "Not fucking Canada, dude."

"Dude," Matthew said, holding tighter, impervious to the bird attacking his chest, "You're out of the school."

Matthew wasn't Declan. He didn't run from the truth, not even if it was horrible. Neither did Ronan.

"Yeah," he told Matthew's curls. "I am."

There didn't seem to be any more to say after that. He and Declan couldn't fight in front of Matthew, so they assembled boxes instead. Matthew took a small one and made a nest for Chainsaw using dirty laundry and strips of toilet paper from the dorm bathroom. Chainsaw, whose character was deplorable, ignored the nest in favor of attacking Ronan's shoes. These Ronan shoved in a box. Declan took his winter coats and did the same. Matthew packed Ronan's jackets, his toothbrush, and his desk lamp. Ronan his puzzle box and his tennis racket and his invisibility cloak. Declan packed the singing pine cones and the laptop and the pen that wrote in automatic cursive. Matthew packed the pile of yearbooks that Ronan had taken from the library and then, when Declan wasn't looking, Ronan unpacked them. Matthew packed the picture of their mother in a frame that hummed. 

No one mentioned that any of these things were odd. No one packed the textbooks, either, because Ronan hadn't touched them in months.

They weren't done until it was nearly dinner. Declan had moved on to the exclusive senior dining hall and Matthew's friends ate at their own table, nowhere near K's group, and today the separation felt heavy and dangerous. Ronan was enraged at this. He wasn't going anywhere. He was staying in Henrietta.

He waited until Declan left, then passed Chainsaw back Matthew's way and picked up the yearbooks. He steered Matthew to the BMW so that he could throw these in the backseat, and then they walked to the dining hall together.

"Hey," he told Matthew, "Next year let's do dinner once a week. Me and you."

"God. Really?" Matthew said. "God. Sure!" 

Then Matthew said, "Shea says people drop out of high school all the time, but they go to public school usually."

"Who the hell is Shea?"

"My friend."

"What's his first name?"

"That _is_ his first name."

"What's his last name?"

Matthew shrugged. The information was irrelevant. He was friends with everyone, short of K's group. Ronan had warned him off of K's group. 

They didn't hug again once they were at the dining hall, because people might see. Instead Ronan touched Matthew's elbow.

"You're not going to be alone next year, okay?" he told him. It came out rough. It wasn't a truth or a lie; it was only a promise, and something in Ronan broke apart at that. This kind of thing had no value yet. He hadn't made it real yet. 

But he was going to.

"I know I haven't been around a lot," he told Matthew quietly. "But I'm not going anywhere."

Matthew nodded. In his hands, Chainsaw kerah-ed again, a dubious sound, as though she didn't trust Ronan's word. Ronan scowled at her, then went in and grabbed a plate, piling on some peas and meatloaf at one of the main bars.

K was waiting at their usual table. K, Skov, Swan, Jiang, Prokopenko -- everybody. Ronan was the only one to live on campus, inasmuch as he did live on campus for now, but none of them passed up free food. Except for Prokopenko. He was staring blankly at his plate.

"Eat up, man," K said carelessly, bringing one hand to the back of Proko's head and slamming it into his food. Proko's head stayed there as his mouth moved mechanically. The others guffawed. Obligingly, K lifted him up by the shirt collar and tossed him a napkin to wipe himself with.

"Your pet eat when you tell it to?" he asked Ronan, jerking his chin at the other end of the room. Chainsaw was sitting in Matthew's lap now, not eating because Matthew had stuffed her full of seeds and possibly also toilet paper while he'd been building her a nest. Only Matthew was eating. Matthew was both a boy and a walking repository for pizza bagels.

"She's not any of your business," Ronan told K. "You're shit with birds."

K made a face, mouth swinging downwards, exaggerated; cheeks going hollow. His heavy-lidded eyes seemed somehow bored, like he'd examined the incomprehensible and found it dull.

"But bitches love me. And your estrogen's been peaking lately, Lynch, so I count you in that."

Ronan had been picking at his meatloaf, but now he stopped to make a gesture that, were he not already being expelled, would have gotten him expelled. K laughed. After K laughed, so did everybody else. Proko laughed hardest.

The rest of the meal passed as calmly as a meal with K could. He was on something -- pills or crystals or the simple high of knowing Ronan had fucked up to a degree that Ronan's dreams couldn't fix -- and it made him almost pleasant. Proko clowned his way through dinner. Everyone laughed more. Ronan found that the more they laughed, the less hungry he was. He left basically the same plate he'd brought to the table, only rearranged, peas crushed to powder, meatloaf ground flat.

"Hey!" K said, when he stood to go. "Leaving, man?"

He was horribly, inappropriately innocent in his surprise. Ronan turned without answering and left the dining hall.

K caught up halfway to the dormitory. His arm wound itself around Ronan's shoulder, his breath came hot on Ronan's ear.

"Fucking dream a diploma," he said.

Ronan didn't want to. He wanted to shrug K off. He wanted to stop feeling alive where K touched him. 

"Fucking dream a...." K began. "A college acceptance letter!"

He laughed at his own joke. Creatures like K and Lynch didn't dream of college. K's kingdom ran parallel to the normal world, darker, stranger. Cars, drugs, the cold crack of K's tongue along the inner shell of Ronan's ear. Ronan jerked away. K laughed again. 

He followed Ronan back to his dorm room, where he took in all the boxes with one lazy flicker of his eyelids. Then he tossed himself on Ronan's bed, skeletal white among the dark sheets. He dug around in one pocket and produced a handful of tablets like little stars. In they went. K's form went briefly still.

Then it shattered up again.

"Guess you're coming home with me, fucker," he said, when he looked again at all the boxes.

Ronan, perched on the windowsill, shook his head.

"I told you I wasn't."

He had a home. He wasn't allowed to go back, but he had one. 

"Such a sadsack," K said, flopping back down. "Ooh, daddy kicked you out."

"Talk about my dad again and I break your face."

"You practically live with me anyway, man. What's the problem? I know the Catholic Church is queer central, but you don't have to fucking _live_ there."

Ronan sucked in a breath. It tasted sour, liquor and vomit. K said, "Don't make me hold your hand, you asshole, get over here."

Ronan went. The barely-adequate school mattress shifted under his weight, sucking him in. K pressed some extra tablets into his hands. 

"I told you to just dream a new will," K said. "Cut Declan out of everything. Nurses for mom. Trust fund and the Niall Lynch memorial playground for Matthew--"

"Don't _talk_ about them--"

"I'm talking about dreams, shithead. You want your shitty farm? Take it. What was it he wrote at the bottom of the will? Fairy language you had to dream to understand? Your dad would agree with me."

Truth, in Kavinsky's mouth, was an all-consuming, destructive thing. Ronan saw red. He hardly realized what he was doing until K was cursing and spitting and punching back, more savage even than Declan. There was blood on the sheets. K grabbed at Ronan's jeans, cracking a red-tinged grin, and Ronan tried to push him off.

"Oh come on," K said. "I've got enough pictures of you to make daddy roll in his grave."

Ronan recoiled and fell off of the bed. K laughed until he was barely breathing, bloodied and hollow-eyed and electric-thrilled in Ronan's pillows.

"Well, you're coming to my party on Thursday night," K said. "You can't pussy out of that." 

He dug through Ronan's sheets until he found the tablets Ronan had dropped while hitting him. He stood, then dropped them at Ronan's sprawled feet. 

"Party on Thursday," he said, holding up a finger. "May thirty-first. Be there, man, because I haven't fucking seen you. You're chasing redneck dick all the time now. Everybody's gonna be there. Lynch's Drop Out of High School Bash. Then later in the month we have an anniversary." Another finger went up. Now there were two fingers, knobbly and white in the low light.

"Guess--" Kavinsky said, as he started for the door. "--fucking _guess_ what we're gonna do to celebrate that will going into effect."

Then he was gone. Ronan found himself alone with the tablets, but when he tried to pick them up he couldn't make his fingers work. They were trembling. He stared at them, his dread as wide as the night.

_We have an anniversary, man._

Exactly one year after Prokopenko had knocked on K's door and offered to help deal substances to Henrietta's more adventurous and least-likely-to-be-missed residents, K had offered him a fistful of pills like glimmering pearls.

_We have an anniversary, man._

Proko had frothed at the mouth for ten minutes and then gone. K had buried the body in the forest. Ronan still wasn't sure if it really had been an accident, or if it had been a dig at Ronan for moving the bones they'd found a week earlier. With K, there was no telling. He was so black he seemed to come around the other side, guiltless and reborn. 

For a moment, Ronan wanted to take the tablets. With K, an anniversary could be anything. So maybe he could take these now, and he could take them all once, and he could take the other ones he'd stashed between the mattress and the wall, where Declan on a packing rampage wouldn't find them.

But he had made a promise. A promise was not quite the truth. It was only something he wanted to make real.

He ground the tablets viciously into the carpet. Then he stood, wiping away at the blood on his face for the second time that day, and left the dorm with the doors behind him clattering. He drove first to Parrish's garage, expecting nothing, wanting nothing, only on instinct. But Parrish wasn't there. Dick Gansey wasn't even there, and when he realized that he would have settled for Gansey he was almost startled out of this blank rage inside him, spiraling out like a chemical disaster.

Gansey and Parrish weren't at Nino's, either. But Blue Sargent was. And she saw Ronan before Ronan could escape.

"Hey!" she said. 

Ronan stared down at her. She was very small. Her shirt looked woven out of baskets. Her earrings were leather tongs with small fake trees on them. Ronan struggled to understand the allure, but he didn't struggle very hard. He had no desire to engage in a useless pursuit.

"Did you find any yearbooks?" she asked now, like he'd come here for that reason. 

He'd found the yearbooks. The Aglionby library was stuffed with them, and now Ronan had brought them here. Ronan had unintentionally completed Dick Gansey's special chore for him. He felt tricked and furious. 

"Wait here, maggot," he told her. He ignored her protests as he turned back to the car.

He was planning on dropping the yearbooks and leaving but had no such luck. When he walked in again, there was another waitress at the front.

"She took her break. She's waiting for you. Table 14, it's the booth by the window over there."

That was exactly where she was. Ronan was denied the chance to drop the books in her lap because she jumped up and grabbed them. They were all from six to nine years ago, because Ronan wasn't sure how long Noah had been at Aglionby, what year he'd begun or what exact year he'd been killed in.

He hadn't bothered leafing through any of them yet. It wouldn't be Noah there. It would just be a living boy Ronan didn't know. But Blue found him so fast it was uncanny. He was on the school wrestling team, skinny-legged and wearing an embarrassing unitard. Ronan couldn't recognize any of the boys around him. His head was turned off-camera, smiling at a shadow, at what looked like a disembodied leg in a cast. 

"I can't believe that's him," Blue said. The boy in the picture was more real in black and white than Noah was in full color. 

Ronan couldn't believe Aglionby had once had a wrestling team. None of the faces were familiar to him and he didn't feel like reading the coach's blurb at the bottom. The real test would be whoever showed up more than once with Noah. These were teammates; that didn't necessarily make them friends. Ronan had captained singles tennis all last year. He wasn't friends with any of those people now. He was pretty sure he wouldn't be protective of them after his death. 

But somehow the smiling mirror-Noah sucked him in. Trapped by his own curiosity, he slid into the booth across from Blue and picked up another yearbook. Photography club. Some kind of portrait of Noah on a skateboard, wearing distressed and flared jeans and a shirt that said Vote For Pedro. Blue found him in the 2004 drama club, manning a sound booth. Ronan found him in the Latin club, wearing a bedsheet as a toga. 

"He did so much stuff," Blue said. She sounded played. Ronan felt played. Noah wasn't meant to be this much of a team player. Ronan wasn't. Blue Sargent didn't seem to be. Dick had been effectively kicked off his team, and Adam had never had one to begin with. Noah, a ghost now, had possibly been better with people than all the rest of them. He was like Matthew, friends with all of Aglionby. And it was easy to imagine that any of these boys -- Chads and Wyndhams and Peytons -- might have left him in the woods and never looked back. Aglionby didn't like scandal. The school wouldn't have followed up on it. 

Blue flipped now to the junior class portraits, difficult to navigate because they were organized by house and not by alphabet. Noah had roomed in Whiscombe House, traditionally more old money than the other houses, and stood out for his crooked smile and features, less polished than the boys around him. Like he'd landed among the Skip Whittakers of the world and stupidly considered it good luck. 

"Hey!" Blue said. "That's not funny!"

She was looking at Noah's quote. 

_New car breaks down? Treat her like a redneck treats his dishwasher. Slap her on the ass and tell her to get back to work._

"That's not funny," Blue said again, voice rising dangerously. "That doesn't even make sense!"

Ronan said, "I know that guy."

He did. The face next to Noah's was familiar, with its young and over-large features. Barrington Whelk, former Latin professor. His quote was _faber est suae quisque fortunae._

"Every man is the architect of his own fortune," Ronan said. 

Blue rolled her eyes. It was clear what she thought of this idea when it came from an Aglionby boy. 

"I think this is the killer," Ronan said. 

He knew it was true when he said it. It wasn't anything to do with Whelk specifically. Whelk had never been anything worse than a creepy shithead. But Ronan still flipped back through all the different Noahs. Barrington Whelk had been in the drama club, playing Lysander in a Midsummer Night's Dream. Barrington Whelk had been in Latin club, obviously. Barrington Whelk had won an award for the skateboarding photograph. When Blue went back to the wrestling picture there, in the coach's blurb, were the words: special thanks to team captain Barrington Whelk (not pictured), who did not let an injury prevent him from rooting for his teammates all season.

Noah was still smiling at the shadow in the cast. 

"They were really close. If he did it, then I think that's awful," Blue said suddenly. 

"Yeah? It's worse for Noah," Ronan said. 

Before Blue could respond, a man came by and made noises about putting her back to work. Ronan reached into his pocket and slapped a fifty on the table. 

"Stay," he ordered. "We've got to take this down to show Parrish and Dick." The man raised his eyebrows. Blue looked furious. 

"You can't just pay me to--"

Ronan tuned her out, unrepentant. This story had become too relatable in the past few minutes, friendship-as-nuclear-meltdown. He arranged the yearbooks in chronological order, thumbing through them. Every discovery was a confirmation. Noah had never been without Whelk. 

"I'm going back to work," Blue snapped. "You need to stop treating people like they're prostitutes!"

Ronan was momentarily distracted because he had no idea what she was talking about. Before her manager could bother him, he waved the fifty at his chest. 

"I'm paying for the booth," he said, and settled in. 

He wasn't expecting Blue Sargent to come back, but over the next few hours she did. She brought coffee. She brought a grimy notepad and a fountain pen with Nino's emblazoned on the side. Eventually she brought herself, when her shift was over, and settle back in to track all the other boys Noah had known, looking for counter-evidence. 

"That's fucking contrary, maggot," Ronan said. 

"That's rich coming from you," Blue said. She was easily distracted and so was Ronan, neither of them suited through this kind of thing. But between spats they managed to use up the entire notepad, ripping pages out and more or less organizing them by friend or pseudo-friend. 

When they'd finished, Blue's fellow waitress was closing up and making faces at them, Whelk's pile was the biggest, and the night around the restaurant was dark and complete. 

"That still doesn't prove it," Blue said, squinting at the results of their research. 

Ronan thought of Prokopenko, and wondered how you proved it. 

-

"Whelk did just disappear," Gansey said the next day, when he was carefully taping the evidence into his journal.

Because Whelk leaving felt significant. There were no coincidences.

But Adam said, "Whelk quit."

Gansey appreciated Adam's need for methodical specificity but couldn't see what it added in this instance. He looked down his glasses at Adam. They were all in Cabeswater, together, holding council by the grave. Lynch had said that Noah was likeliest to show here. Gansey had found that Noah was likeliest to show anywhere. It was the _un_ showing that was the problem.

But Lynch had been surprisingly helpful with the yearbooks. And he'd made this quiet resting place, guarded by mournful willows and tended by jewel-colored insects. When Gansey could give nothing back to Noah, Lynch had given him this. If this was where Lynch wanted to meet, if Lynch wanted them to keep the stakes in mind, then Gansey would allow it.

"Whether it was Whelk or not, we should find out why," Gansey said. "Why kill Noah, and why here? Maybe it was a mistake."

He hoped it was a mistake. Murder only made sense if it was a mistake.

"Why don't you just call all his classmates and ask, Dick?" Lynch said. "'Hey, seven years ago, did you just trip and fall and beat your friend to death?'"

He seemed even surlier than usual. He was not looking at Adam in a way that was worse than looking. Gansey only noticed this, though, because he couldn't help looking himself. Adam and Blue were sprawled together on the grass, intertwined and exhausted after shifts at their respective jobs. Adam was on his stomach with his head pillowed on his forearms. Blue was lying with her head on his back. They were summery and comfortable together. Gansey wanted very badly to join them but it didn't seem appropriate with Lynch present. 

So Gansey settled for quietly welcoming the picture they made: the strip of brown skin at Blue's ankles, Adam's elegant, freckled neck. He liked to see them before him like this.

"We can probably look all these people up, though," Adam said. "These guys could all be online somewhere. We might figure something out that way."

Lynch snorted.

"I'm not looking up a bunch of career profiles for investment bankers. What do you think you'll find? 'Trip went to Harvard. Trip killed his friend and here's why.' That's a waste of time, anyway. It's Whelk."

Adam didn't argue and say it wasn't Whelk. He only said, "He always seemed more 'regular creepy teacher' to me."

"When did he disappear?" Gansey asked. That still felt important, but he couldn't remember an exact date. Gansey had never paid much attention to Whelk. Whelk had been an school curiosity, Aglionby written in his name. Vaguely depressing dissipation written on everything else. Like a school mascot soon to retire, or that vending machine in the athletic center that was always out of order.

Lynch looked unimpressed with Gansey.

"It was like less than two months ago. You honestly don't remember?" 

"He _quit_ right around the time Gansey lost his money, so it makes sense that Gansey didn't notice," Adam said, somehow managing to both rebuke and defend.

Blue cut in.

"All I'm getting from this is that your Latin teacher went to school with Noah and was kind of a creep. Calla touched those yearbooks and said that whoever it was left ghosts on the line--"

"Yeah. Noah," Lynch said.

" _Ghosts_ ," said Blue. "More than one. Calla thinks there's another one. If Noah won't tell us who the killer is, maybe the other ghost will."

Lynch's glare was pitiless. 

"Why should we listen to your witch aunt--"

"My family _does_ this--"

"Yeah. For a living. What's she charging for sending us after the Ley Line Killer--"

Gansey tuned out the ensuing, mostly-unintentionally-fascinating debate on magic-for-profit and found his journal entries on time anomalies near the ley line.

"Jane," he said sharply. "I would like to know if Calla could tell you when this other person died. Was it -- was it Neeve?"

Blue and Adam both lifted their heads to stare at him, wide-eyed. Gansey frowned and traced the notes he had copied from R. Malory's first painstaking attempts at email. 

_Two tricky aspects to ley lines. 1. They enjoy reciprocity and sacrifice. Your sacrifice, not theirs. 2. Time not linear._

Not exactly new information, but it had been good to see it confirmed. He'd already known about time being tricky near the line, and Cabeswater had proven it, but only now did he begin to apply the information. What if the second ghost hadn't been made a ghost yet? Was it possible for a person to walk around, their death written into being without their knowing about it? Or did all people walk around that way?

Gansey suspected that it was all in how you looked at things, but he still found it impossible to wrap his mind around this. It was a thought to tuck away and never look at again.

"If it is Whelk," Adam said slowly. "If. Then maybe this has to do with him leaving. Maybe this time it would've gotten him in trouble, killing whoever he killed."

"Why didn't it get him, or whoever it was, in trouble before?" Gansey said. Noah had lain here for nearly seven years. Unclaimed. Unburied. According to Blue and Ronan, there was not so much as a memorial in the later yearbooks. He might have quietly transferred out, instead of being beaten to death in a grove of close-growing, magical trees.

Gansey didn't really believe in hell or divine punishment, because even regular punishment seemed a foreign and unnecessary concept, something that happened to other people. But a strange, hitherto-undiscovered part of him felt unmoored and enraged when he thought of Noah.

"Whoever did it," Blue said now, looking uncomfortable, "he's an Aglionby student, right? They get away with things all the time."

"And maybe there weren't enough people to miss him," Adam said quietly. "Noah, I mean."

Summer abruptly left the clearing. Gansey didn't want to think of Noah having no one. He thought again of Noah standing by him, when Gansey had had no one.

"We find the other ghost, whether it's Neeve or someone else," he told everyone. "So we can find who did this. So we can report them to the police, and free the line."

And Glendower. 

But first the ghost. R. Malory had little to offer on this point, so over the next few days Gansey deferred to the expertise of the internet and public library. The latter gave him a sense of the history of Cabeswater, or rather, its complete lack thereof, a mystery-spot on the line known mostly for its preponderance of ravens. If there were ghosts other than Noah there, no one had recorded any. 

But Gansey wasn't discouraged. The internet taught him how to build an EMF reader. This would have been impossible before he'd started routinely working with electrical systems and the Camaro's own recalcitrant biology. Now, it was merely challenging. He finished building it in a few days, easier than trying to fix whatever was wrong with the Camaro's air conditioning this week.

He wanted to test the EMF reader with Adam, but when he called the trailer Adam said that he had work until the evening, so Gansey arranged to pick him up after that. He called Blue as well, but Calla answered and barked that Blue was busy on some kind of outing with her mother all day. Noah still wasn't appearing.

He'd told the others that they were not to go into Cabeswater alone. And he felt strange not at least offering Lynch the chance to come along. Lynch had been the one to show them Cabeswater in the first place. He and Lynch had exchanged numbers after Noah had appeared at the grave, so Gansey sent him a hopeful text now.

Lynch didn't respond. The minutes mounted and mounted. Gansey felt oddly bereft. He would have liked the chance to know Lynch better. 

The warm golden day gave way to a peach-colored, humid haze. Researching in the Camaro became impossible. Gansey drove across town to clean his clothes, mostly for the chance to spend some time under the whirring fans of the laundromat. After that, he drove to work early because Nino's had air conditioning and Donny never minded it when Gansey parked the Camaro in the lot longer than necessary. Blue was not working, and was probably still out with her mother, and this added to the air of purposeless defeat that had somehow engulfed Gansey's morning.

It was well into the afternoon and he was walking back to the Camaro after his shift when Lynch pulled into the parking lot.

"Did you just text me?" he demanded, lowering his window. The blast of cold air briefly lifted Gansey's mood and aspect.

"I texted you seven hours ago," Gansey said.

Lynch made a gesture like it was all the same to him.

"I have to pick Adam up in about an hour," Gansey said. "Do you want to come with us to Cabeswater?"

Lynch made a second gesture, just as careless as the first, but probably not intended to convey no. Gansey would take it. He went to get his newly-made EMF reader as Lynch pulled the BMW up next to the Camaro, then let himself into the BMW's passenger-side seat.

"You don't mind if we take your car, do you?" Gansey said. He'd never known what a blessing air conditioning was until this summer.

Lynch shrugged.

"Must get boring staring at the walls of your house-car all day."

Sometimes it did, but Gansey wasn't here to discuss that. There was a question on his tongue. He wondered if he should shelve it, try to solve it himself. He'd found that there was an unbridled, simple pleasure in mysteries, provided they were not ugly ones like the mystery of Noah's killer. 

This wasn't an ugly one. Just one he was unsure of, a fragile possibility that he suspected he'd squashed without meaning to. He couldn't make this a quest. He owed it to Lynch to say it plainly. So far Lynch had been plain with him.

"Why Adam?" 

It was like he'd sucked all the air out of the car. Lynch sat motionless. The points of his eyebrows were lethal.

"Why the fuck do you think it's any of your business?"

"I think it's sensible," Gansey said. "Adam is wonderful."

Silence.

Gansey sighed. "We are. He and Blue and I. We're--"

Words never failed Gansey, and yet here they were giving up on him completely, the last things to walk right out of his life. Anything he could say wouldn't summarize it. It was still very new, and he hadn't meant to hurt Lynch with it, but he couldn't give it up. That was all. That was all he wanted to say.

"I wanted to find Glendower just to find him, but I would have given the favor to Adam and Blue," he said, after a moment.

It was true. He hadn't let himself openly believe in the favor and it had passed him by completely, gone to Noah's killer instead. But Gansey wouldn't have deserved it anyway. He'd always had more than he needed. 

Now he had Adam and Blue and Noah. Adam and Blue and Noah and an orange car that needed love and appeasement far too often, like a finicky god. That was more than enough. He closed his eyes and felt his own breathing, and tried not to feel the failure that came of letting Glendower slip through his fingers. He knew he hadn't, really. Someone else had taken him. That was all. But without the favor the good that Gansey could do for his friends was so much smaller. They'd helped him and comforted him and he had little to offer in return. 

"Who knew leader Dick had so many fucking feelings?" Lynch said. The words seemed to snap out of him with sudden ferocity.

" _Gansey_ ," Gansey ordered, without bothering to open his eyes. "Call me Gansey, please. Not Dick."

Lynch said nothing for a minute. 

Then in a great rush, "I wasn't going to ask him for anything."

Gansey believed him. He didn't need to hear more than that. Lynch didn't stop.

"I know it's not about him," he spat. "I know it's in me."

Gansey could sympathize.

"It's my problem that I like him. I wasn't going to ask him for anything. It's not about him."

"It's a little bit about him," Gansey pointed out. But he thought he understood. Knowing what you wanted changed _you_. Not the person you wanted. 

Lynch was flushed now. Gansey put a steadying hand on his shoulder.

"Lynch," he told him gently. "It's alright."

Lynch stared at his hand for a second, his eyes dangerous. Gansey worried briefly that Lynch would try to punch him again.

He didn't. Instead he put the key in the ignition and said, "Ronan." 

Gansey blinked at him.

" _Ronan_ , Gansey."

"Alright," Gansey said, settling back into his seat. Ronan Lynch was a wordless being and savage when he wasn't, so securing even just his name seemed to settle something. 

Gansey felt better, at least.

He thought Lynch knew the way to the trailer park because he'd given Gansey the address in the first place. It turned out that he only knew it theoretically. He missed the first exit from the highway. Then he drove past the dirt road turnoff, cursed when Gansey said he'd missed it, then tried to back onto the road so that he could turn off and go back the other way.

"This is actually it," Gansey told him, frowning. "This is the road."

Lynch muttered something that sounded suspiciously like, "Where are all the good intentions?" as he turned onto it. 

Adam had proposed that he meet Gansey at the bank of mailboxes halfway down the road, and with all the delay he should have been there already. There was nothing there but dust and flies. The BMW slowed aggressively to a stop and Lynch eyed each mailbox in turn like he thought taking a bat to the whole cluster would improve it. Gansey couldn't exactly disagree.

"He was just getting off work a little while ago," Gansey said. "He'll be here any minute."

He didn't come. They waited there, on the driest, dustiest road in the valley, for close to fifteen minutes. More flies collected in front of that hive of mailboxes. Aside from that it was empty space. Now the sky was darkening a bit, but this part of Henrietta saw no pink-hued sunsets. At this hour everything shifted from dusty and colorless to a dreary yellow. It was not an improvement. 

"Forget this," Gansey decided, cracking before even Lynch did. "He's probably not at the trailer, but let's go check."

He hoped Adam was not at the trailer. In his mind he created a parade of excuses for Adam: Adam was working two jobs instead of one, Adam had mistakenly told him the wrong time, Adam was pulling a double-shift on a whim. The BMW crept along, flashy and out-of-place as a clouded leopard, until he told Ronan to stop in front of the double-wide. It was striped grey by the evening. There were lights on inside but the curtains were drawn. 

He could hear the shouting out here, even on the drive.

"--Dale Ellis and he tells me you were _begging hours_ off of him --"

Gansey was out of the car before he knew what he was doing. He hardly realized that Lynch -- Ronan -- was keeping pace with him. He threw up a hand to stop him going further. He felt as dangerously out-of-control as he had the day he'd come here with Blue, but Ronan was worse. He looked lit, a firework, and Gansey cursed and began to drag him along the side of the trailer.

He looked for the dog, which had somehow become as fond to him as it was dubiously healthy and decidedly ugly, but it was nowhere to be found. The carport was a gloomy circus of tools, nude calendars, coolers, car parts. The shouting was clearer here. 

" _Don't you dare look in my face and lie to me!_ "

Ronan thought the same way Blue did. He was at the window, licking his fingers, the gesture criminal now instead of clever. Gansey wanted to protest mainly because it was the wrong window. It was the one that led to the Parrishes' bedroom, not Adam's. Then his mind caught up with him, and it screamed things like _criminal trespassing_. There was a loud thump against the trailer wall. Every inch of Gansey became cold to reason. Ronan Lynch hoisted himself up and in through the window and Gansey let him. He hesitated for a moment, unsure if he should follow, and then went back around to the door instead. He pounded on it, hard, not caring what followed. Adam's father broke off in the middle of his tirade but no one answered. Gansey cupped his hands and tried to see through an opening in the front windows. He saw nothing. He saw a sudden movement, like someone had fallen. He saw Robert Parrish's broad back, blocking everything else from view, before Ronan tackled it.

Gansey's pounding took on new urgency.

Adam's mother tore open the door. She didn't bother to look at Gansey and clearly assumed it was a neighbor, because her voice was jagged and high but certain. She said, "Thank god. We need to call the police--" She waved a phone at him.

 _This is home intrusion_ , Gansey thought clearly. _I don't think Maitland can get me out of this._

And yet he didn't care. He shifted Adam's mother aside. He saw the dinginess of the trailer, dull chipped countertops and a cheap furniture set, he saw Ronan reel back seconds before Robert Parrish smashed a fist into his face. He saw the moment when Ronan shifted, pivoted, caught Parrish in the stomach.

That was definitely a crime. Gansey could have stopped him. He didn't want to. 

Adam had fallen behind the island that separated the living area from the kitchen. He didn't look destroyed; the bruises weren't forming yet. He looked like he couldn't make himself work properly. Gansey watched him try to pull himself up and fail, unbalanced and wrong. 

"Adam," he said. Ronan and Robert Parrish were destroying the living room. Gansey wasn't sure how he managed to cross past them to reach Adam, but he did manage it. He tried to help Adam up but Adam was uncoordinated, like something newly-born or else half-dead. Panic strangled every one of Gansey's nerves.

" _Adam_ ," he said again. He turned to get his arms under Adam's shoulders, and he saw Adam's mother give up her yelling and escape outside with the phone, leaving Adam to struggle against the counter.

Gansey despised everything about this place.

"We have to go," he told Adam. "Come on. Let's get out."

Adam still couldn't stand. They were moving in different time zones. Ronan and Robert Parrish were a furious, lashing, _fast_ storm, Adam's mother's absence had been fast, everything was happening too fast. And yet Adam's reactions did not match up. He was delayed, like none of these events had affected him yet.

"Parrish," Gansey said. "Come on. We have to get out of here. You have to go."

There were shouts from outside, like the neighbors had finally arrived.

Adam said, after too many seconds. "You have to go."

It didn't sound like something he had the capacity to come up with himself. It sounded only like he'd managed to echo Gansey. Then, after a few more agonizing seconds:

"He has a gun."

Gansey understood in theory what this meant, and the theory was enough. He didn't want to know more than that. He tried to steer Adam to the door but Adam was ungainly, uncoordinated, and didn't seem to want to come with him. There was nothing so distant and foreign as his face. Gansey's friend had retreated somewhere. Gansey tried, once more, to say, "Parrish, _come on_ \--"

Then someone tackled him.

Abruptly, the world no longer crawled by the way it did for Adam. It was too fast again. Pain and surprise robbed Gansey of any understanding, and he was being hauled up and marched down the trailer steps, and when he saw the flashing lights and the uniforms he thought, almost offended, 

_This can't be happening to_ me.

It wasn't supposed to. There were a million reasons why -- he wasn't rude, he hadn't hurt anyone, he was a _Gansey_.

He was shoved against the police car and cuffed at the same time Ronan was. Ronan was harder to cuff. He displayed all the outraged incense Gansey felt. 

"--beats the shit out of him--"

The policeman cuffing Gansey turned him around roughly, so that he faced the trailer. He was saying something, but Gansey was still so offended that he couldn't hear or reply. The cop was a small, local kind of man, and he was not supposed to be doing this to Gansey. Gansey couldn't believe he had to look at him. He looked instead at the crowd of gawking neighbors, at Adam's mother speaking low to one of the policemen, at Adam's father being clapped on the back, at the double-wide.

Adam was standing in the doorway. He didn't look like he would be leaving tonight. Disappointment and rage crushed every last good impulse Gansey had. He didn't know who he was for a moment. He wasn't Gansey; he was something betrayed.

Then Adam stepped forwards and nearly fell down the stairs, still off-balance. He was on his hands and knees in the dust. No one noticed for a few seconds.

"Get that one," said one of the policemen. "Is he drunk?"

Another policeman pulled Adam up. Adam shook his head at something he said, tried to point somewhere, couldn't seem to do it. Then Gansey saw his mouth form the words _press charges._ The policeman he was speaking to looked not to Gansey and Ronan, but past them, at Robert Parrish, as if he were only now seeing Adam's father for what he was.

Gansey was briefly elated. It made for a whiplash effect, a relief so great and profound that it was painful.

But when the policeman holding Adam up went to cuff Robert Parrish, there was no victory. Adam looked at the dusty yard, at the gawking neighbors, at his mother, at Gansey. He looked far away and so unhappy that all the ugliness around him paled and became meaningless. He swayed. 

Gansey was still cuffed and could not help him, so he fell in the dust.

-

Blue didn't hear about the fight until much later, because Blue was experiencing Maura's idea of punishment.

When Blue had been born, Maura had become briefly obsessed with books about children. Books that characterized children in a humane and yet distanced way. Children as a newly-discovered Amazonian animal species. You couldn't startle them, you could never make declarations to them. You had to _gently convey_ disappointment to these creatures, not simply _tell_ them about it.

Maura was mostly over this kind of thing, but the books remained tucked into a corner of the reading room and Maura had internalized some lessons from them. This became very clear when she forced Blue to come with her to the Valley Region Psychic Task Force meeting.

Blue hated the Task Force. So did Maura. These days, Orla or Jimi attended any meetings that seemed like they might be necessary or instructive, but Blue remembered tagging along with her mother and Calla as a child. A curious silence would descend on the room when Maura's amplifier daughter entered, a _how do I get her to sit next to **me**?_ kind of silence. Then a surreptitious card slapping and handling to try and see how best to accomplish this without annoying Maura Sargent. Then a rush to be the first to tell Blue she would kill her true love. Then, as newcomers realized what else was different about Blue, someone would say it,

_Oh, can't she see anything herself?_

Blue hated the Task Force. She wasn't even sure what their tasks were, or what they were intending to force on the region. Before they proposed any ideas, they would talk for fifteen minutes about how hard they had worked on these ideas. After they proposed ideas, they would break for drinks and readings, and agree to scry in case other ideas were better. They saw the future, but it mostly seemed to dare them to do better next time. 

Meetings were held above Jennifer's Knick-knacks Store in Harrisville. Jennifer's son, Jeff, was the only psychic in West Virginia with a radio show, something which always made Blue resentful because he was also West Virginia's only male psychic. He wore track pants and paisley button-down shirts and he handled the entire group like they were kindergartners who required a very strict schedule. According to rumor, he had once proposed to Calla and she'd laughed so hard she'd choked and then asked why his cards hadn't confirmed that the answer was definitely no.

He opened the door now and said what he always said when he saw Blue, which was, "Oh, huh, it's Blue," less like he was greeting a person and more like he was being asked his opinion on an unconventional color scheme.

"Hi," Blue said shortly.

Thankfully, she knew everyone inside today and they all knew her, so no one was likely to suddenly discover that she wasn't psychic. Less thankfully, many of them immediately declared that they'd known she would be coming today. Blue rolled her eyes. So did Maura. They took a seat at one end of Jeff's white wicker table, covered in a novelty tablecloth that said 'Miami Beach' in curlicue lettering and had many pictures of brunettes in coconut bras on it. Hands were already snapping and flicking, spreading cards with clever sleight of hand. No matter what the topic was, gatherings of psychics tended to give off a casino feel, everyone competing to see who could be smoothest with their cards.

Blue tuned out the first few questions they posed to their decks. Jeff's air conditioner was a loud, vacuum-sounding thing, greedy for attention. So naturally every member of the task force was speaking very softly, the better to make everyone else lean in and have to work very hard to prove they were interested. Blue was not interested. 

This being a task force meeting, however, more than one person was interested in her. Jeff passed her the first note. 

I THOUGHT I SHOULD TELL YOU THAT THIS IS THE YEAR YOU FALL IN LOVE.

Blue glared at him across the table. He was wearing a look he probably felt was sympathetic, but it was unconvincingly so. Blue wondered if anyone had ever explained to him how creepy it was for a grown man to pass something like this to a teenage girl. She considered complaining to Maura, became briefly furious at the realization that she'd rather handle it herself, and then became more furious when Jayne Godlewsky, the psychic from way out in Summersville, slid her a note that read:

Be careful, Blue! You fall in love this year!

And they kept coming.

Soon you fall in love.

This is the year you finally meet him.

Your true love awaits!!! Remember -- if you kiss him, he will die.

By the time they broke for drinks, Blue was whirring on people and snapping, "I _know_!" Maura stood across the room, looking arch and satisfied. She didn't need to issue any warnings because she'd brought Blue to an entire roomful of potential surrogate parents, each seeking to make themselves more valuable and paternal than the last.

"I get it," Blue told her.

"Get what?" Maura said innocently. Neither of them mentioned the fact that Blue had two boyfriends now. Blue refused to be the one to bring that up. Instead she said, "You hate being here too," because it was both true and sufficiently accusatory. She couldn't believe Maura had brought her here just for this.

But after the break, Maura faced the group.

"I've been trying to find my sister, Neeve," she told them.

No one slapped any cards on the table in response. They were too busy gawking. Neeve was perhaps the most famous psychic to come out of the area, and while Blue had assumed that everyone would have known she was visiting -- the task force always asked after her, after all -- now she realized that Neeve had received no visitors or even phone calls. No one had had any idea that she was in Henrietta, or why she was in Henrietta.

Except for Maura. 

She wasn't explaining now. She dispensed with context: Neeve had come to visit, Neeve had been looking for something, now she was left looking for Neeve. Somehow stripped to the essentials it had a certain mystery, which made it impossible for the psychics to resist. There were about ten people present, which made a simultaneous reading a dubious thing: ten people seeing the spiritual meant ten times the uncertainties. So it was decided that Maura would draw one card from every deck present, they would scry, and then they would see what the cards could explain about their visions. Neeve had been famed in this group for her scrying, so this seemed appropriate. Jeff left for a moment and came back with a large pink basin, possibly from his mother's store. A brief spat ensued on the best substance to use, but Maura collected decks with such ferocity that they quickly decided on apple juice. 

Blue, as always, was directed to sit in the corner. No, in the center. No, over in the windowseat. No, over by the door. Maura intervened now and told them all very clearly to fuck off, but it was pointless. Blue didn't care where she sat. She knew that once they began taking their turns at the scrying bowl, they'd all forget she was here anyway.

Maura lined up all the decks on the table and drew a single card, face down, from each. Blue, now back in the window seat, tucked her legs underneath her and tuned out for the visions part. They'd all just be trying to outdo eachother. Outside, Harrisville was green and hazy, summer-bright. A small blue bug crawled its way along the outer sill. Blue watched it, bored. There wasn't a single soul on the street beyond. It was too hot. The only moving thing was something reflected in the store window across the street. 

It coalesced into a form. 

Blue blinked. 

It was _not_ Neeve in the same way Noah was _not_ the boy from the yearbooks. Her hair was matted and ruined, her pleasant and plump face smudged just the way Noah's was. But her stare had all the same power that Neeve's had always had. She stared. And she stared and she stared. And then she fell, or tripped or something, and then some unknown force was beating her to death. 

In the store window above her, there were some words reflected. Jennifer's Knick-knacks. They wavered. Blue blinked. They said something in a language she couldn't read. Then they said something in Latin. Then they said: BARRINGTON WHELK. 

She'd found the second ghost, and it was confirming the identity of the killer. Or rather, Neeve had found her. Blue's chest was tight with dread and wonder, two feelings she'd never expected to feel at once. She wasn't sure she liked the combination.

"Blue," came Maura's voice. 

When Blue looked back at her, and then back at the street outside, Neeve was gone. The store window reflected nothing unusual. 

"Flip the cards, please, Blue," said her mother. 

The psychics were tittering excitedly. They'd all seen the same thing: someone sleeping. A sleeper on the corpse road, laid out like a trap. Ten pairs of eyes fixed on Blue's hands, eager to see what the cards had to say about this. 

Every card she flipped was the page of cups.

"Yes," said Maura, and her voice was small and tight, and Maura's voice was never small and tight. "That was what we saw, too."

The page of cups was Blue's card.

It was all too much, too quickly, a procession of too many things beyond human comprehension. Blue kept thinking: _is this it? is it finally happening?_ Which made no sense, because she had no idea just what was happening. She only felt like she was stepping into something she'd been expecting without knowing she was expecting it, or else into something that happened before. This made it hard to focus on the many offers she got now to do readings, to have her palm examined, to have entrails read for her benefit.

"No thanks," Maura said loudly. "We'll be going now."

But Blue didn't fail to notice that she looked unsettled, or that they left behind a gaggle of psychics promising to watch out for Blue, as though this all had to do with her. When they were in the car and driving back to Henrietta, she half-expected Maura to say something like, 'You won't kiss anybody, will you?' or 'You won't go back to that forest now, right?'

But instead Maura pulled the car over and said, "Blue. What's wrong?"

Blue felt her eyes growing wet. 

"Did you know that Neeve's death had something to do with me?"

Maura's answer was immediate and decisive. "It doesn't, Blue. It doesn't. It has to do with something that does have to do with you, but it isn't your fault. That much I know."

She pulled Blue into a hug. Blue realized that the day had not been a lesson for her but a test for Maura; Maura had seen something in her own cards that she did not want to believe. Maura never ran from her readings, so this must not have been good.

"I saw her," Blue said. "Neeve."

She described what she'd encountered. Maura did not stop holding her, but for a moment her face filled with the same wonder and dread Blue had felt, just the same. And there was something else there, too. A closed-off knowing, a psychic look. Blue was acutely reminded of the times she'd tried to ask Maura about her father. She didn't actually find him uninteresting, she just hadn't wanted to share that in fact she was very insensibly fond of the idea of him, because with the little that Maura ever told her, who wouldn't be? 

Whatever Maura knew of what had happened to Neeve belonged in the same box as Blue's father. Maura knew, and Maura thought it would be best not to tell. Blue felt very keenly the difference between them, mother and daughter, psychic and something else. She thought she hated that difference more than anything else in the world. She buried her head in her mother's neck again.

"I thought you were just mad about Gansey and Adam," she told Maura's neck.

"I _am_ mad about Gansey and Adam," Maura said. Her neck reverberated with exasperation. "You never had a single boyfriend, and now you have two?"

"I haven't kissed them," Blue pointed out. She hoped Maura wouldn't ask what she had done. Maura didn't, but made a reproachful sound that indicated that she could guess. Her arms wound tighter around Blue.

"Can I ask you to not do anything bad, and only do everything good?" Maura demanded.

"Oh, sure," Blue said.

"No, that's no good. I mean only do things that are good for you."

"Oh, sure."

Maura sighed. 

"At least I know you'll stab them if they try anything you dislike."

"I would but I don't have anything to stab them with," Blue pointed out. 

"And this is going to be my fault for never arming you with pointy weapons, I bet."

"Hey, you said it, not me."

And just like that: Blue felt better. She knew she shouldn't have, but this was Maura, and so she did. They stopped to pick up dinner at a barn converted into a market, and Blue flirted with the idea that maybe if she asked nicely, and intimated that she might need it now that she was a dating woman, Maura would buy her a switchblade. Maura did not. She flirted shamelessly with a steely kind of man perusing the same stall where the switchblade was. They bought tacos from a vendor and ate them at a picnic table outside, and then Maura's phone buzzed. She brought it to her ear, listened briefly, and then looked across at Blue, alarmed.

"It's your boys," she said. She looked taken aback. "They're at the hospital."

And even though she had said she didn't approve of Blue having two boyfriends at once, Maura still drove there next, tense the whole way. Apparently they had been asked to provide the name of an adult and Gansey had offered his. When this had been rejected, they'd offered Maura's.

"Sorry," Blue said, worried about whatever had landed them there and yet still fully aware that her mother hadn't asked for this.

"Don't be," Maura said. "They should have said me first. How old is Gansey? Seventeen?"

Blue had no idea, actually. She didn't have a great grasp on ages. Maura had always seemed halfway like a peer to her, but when they arrived at the hospital she was entirely adult, businesslike and crisp, asking after the appropriate ward. Blue could tell she was uncomfortable with this and loved her for trying it anyway. 

Gansey and Ronan Lynch were at the ward desk, talking to the hospital staff. Gansey was talking, clearly in charge. Lynch was holding out his wallet, wordlessly offering his checking information and major credit cards. Gansey turned to them and the hospital light was so bright that it reflected off of his glasses. His expression was impenetrable. His voice was tidy, reasonable.

"Adam doesn't have insurance, but Ronan is taking care of it," he said. 

Maura eyed Ronan Lynch, then eyed Blue like later they would be having a talk about Blue suddenly producing extra boys all the time.

Lynch, who was now Ronan, apparently, said, "I'll have a place for him to go tomorrow."

"Thank you, Ronan," Gansey said.

Adam was nowhere to be seen, but Gansey had a sheaf of papers someone had handed him. Blue went up to him and took them. They were not for Gansey. They had Adam's name and personal information on them. Single-sided deafness: what to expect.

It took some time to sort everything out and learn what had happened, and some time after that for Adam to emerge, looking strangely unharmed. His ear was a little red. His face was as removed as Gansey's was controlled, and Blue looked wildly from one to the other, trying to find the boys she knew. She didn't know what she should do, or what should happen next. This was worse than learning about Noah or seeing Neeve, because those things felt like they should have happened, and this felt only like a freak accident, a random blow that left Adam and Gansey both changed in different ways.

Where was Adam going to go?

Here, Maura came in handy.

"He can sleep with us tonight," she said, when Gansey had explained Adam's dilemma to her. 

Gansey, not Adam, looked relieved at this. Adam played with the paper hospital bracelet on his wrist and said nothing.

"You," Maura said to Gansey, "can also sleep with us tonight."

Blue gaped at her. So did Gansey. So did Ronan.

"Oh, come on," Maura said, rolling her eyes. "I'm not going to take the other one in and leave him out in the cold. He lives in his _car_."

Ronan kicked at a bench in the waiting room. Maura said, "No. Nope. I draw the line at the first two."

He said, incensed, "I'm not moving into your fucking coven. I have something to do tonight!" and rapidly excused himself. 

After that they went to Fox Way and set up both remaining boys in the reading room for the night, with spare blankets and the lumpy cushions from the couch to serve as pillows. Adam's removed manner didn't change, but later that night, when Maura and all the women of the house had gone to sleep, Blue crept downstairs and heard him speak for the first time.

"Don't act like this isn't what you wanted, Gansey--"

"I didn't! You're making this out to be the end of the world."

"It is."

"Don't be stupid. You don't need to be so dramatic--"

Their voices were rising, Adam's wildly and without calculation, Gansey's with a dangerous and measured control, like raising his voice was an absolute last resort that he needed Adam to know Adam was pushing him to. Blue pushed open the doors to the reading room, picked up a cushion, and lobbed it at them. 

They each sat up, startled. Adam's hair was smashed against one side of his head, and Gansey, not wearing his glasses, was squinting at her in the low light.

"Shut up!" Blue hissed.

She found Gansey's glasses and brought them to him, then sat between them. They both gave off so much heat, and that was something she'd never thought of before they'd started this, how much energy people could give off in this way. Blue was supposed to amplify energy, but she'd never actually bothered to think about what it meant, that people had it in the first place. She took Adam's hand.

"I think it makes a lot of sense," she said quietly, "if this feels like the end of the world."

It wasn't. Gansey was right. It wasn't. It was better that Adam was out. It was better that Adam wouldn't be hurt anymore. It was better that Adam was here, with them, than back in that double-wide with his parents. These were truths. There was no way around them.

But Blue could not imagine the courage it took to walk away from the only home Adam had ever known. 

She pulled him in. This close, Adam was always surprisingly solid and muscled, but now he shook. He was inconsolable. Blue didn't know what to do and so she cupped a palm over her mouth, pressed it to his head, and kissed him through her palm. Her fingers brushed the tip of his ear. If they turned on the lights, would it still be red? Would it ever heal? What did it mean, losing something you took for granted all the time?

She pulled him in closer. For a moment she felt miserable, as though she'd taken in some of this pain. But she didn't want to give it back. She didn't want him to be alone. She felt Gansey touch her back softly and turned to look at him. He looked on the outside the way she felt on the inside, like he was seeing a world that was uglier than he wanted it to be.

"Does your ear hurt?" Blue asked, after a few minutes. She didn't know why she focused on this, but it seemed like something that should or could be fixed. Adam's discharge papers had predicted that this could be permanent, but Blue didn't want to believe that.

Adam pulled away a little so that he could look at her. One hand crept up, about to touch his ear, and then he dropped that hand very suddenly. 

"It isn't--" he began. Here he shook his head. He carried his misery in his face; it was even more serious and removed than usual. Blue watched him drop the problem of his ear and focus on another one, methodical, ruthless, sequential. "I -- my mom will never _speak_ to me again."

He was backing away and picking at the hospital bracelet still on his wrist, but Blue didn't want to let him go, not like this.

"Adam," she said. "Adam, come on."

Miraculously, he came back to her. Blue shifted to let him bury his face against her chest. He fell asleep like this. Blue wasn't sure how long it took. She only knew that she wanted to stay with him until he stopped crying, and soon enough his breathing evened.

She thought Gansey was asleep as well, because he'd spread out next to them without complaint, compact and strong and so warm against her back that he was his own form of comfort.

But when she stood to go back to her room, he turned his head to follow her.

"Jane?" he said softly.

Adam held onto sleep like it was a troubled, fragile thing. Blue didn't want to ruin that and neither did Gansey, so by some mutual accord they found themselves on the stair, where they'd be less likely to wake him.

"I'm so sorry to bring this on your family, Jane," Gansey said. "I didn't think today. He was hurt, and I just reacted--"

"Not just you," Blue pointed out.

The dim hallway light caught on his high cheekbones, his excellent jaw. This was still the presidential boy she'd met months ago now, still tanned, compact, classically handsome. But the expression on his face recalled something Maura had said:

_What is he? Seventeen?_

Blue was only seventeen herself and yet she knew seventeen was too young for any of this. Only Gansey didn't seem to know it. He held himself to a standard so high that everyone else believed in it, and Blue wondered if this kind of thing was only beneficial for everyone else, not for Gansey.

They were sitting side by side on the top stair, so Blue turned her head, cupped her mouth again so that it would not be a weapon, and kissed his shoulder through her palm. When she looked up at him again, this close, his eyes were wet.

"Thank you," he told her, after a moment.

And though the Maura in Blue's head looked in with disapproval, Blue found herself inviting him up to her room, where she turned on a low light and introduced him to the collages, the bits of half-finished shredded clothing, the various photographs of herself and Maura and Calla and Orla and Jimi. She told him about the day she'd had, with Neeve and the page of cups replicated ten times, a future so immovable that everyone saw it.

He listened patiently. 

"Christ. It's been as awful a day for you as it has for everyone else," he said, shaking his head. Somehow they'd ended up on her bed, facing each other, and though the space was tight he maneuvered himself down so that he was at her hip, lifting up her oversized t-shirt.

"Can I, Jane?"

She nodded. He pressed a kiss to her hip, and Blue wondered what it felt like for him, wondered if the contact and warmth was as wonderful when you were the one giving it. She almost shuddered at how unfair it was that she couldn't do it back, but he'd moved on to pulling down her underwear.

Then he was licking her, tentative and obliging. 

The first time, it had been Adam doing this while Gansey kissed her neck. Blue had been terribly embarrassed. Was it alright that there was hair down there? Then furious. Of course it was alright. They had hair. Everyone had hair. 

Adam's tongue had been curious, not exactly perfect. It hadn't started to feel good for a long until he'd stopped being urgent, stopped familiarizing himself with the territory, and relaxed into long, slow licks of her clit and hood, and after that it still hadn't been perfect but it had become -- nice. They'd only done it a few times since, Gansey and Adam for the most part alternating, and every time it was a little bit nicer, a little bit more intimate. Adam was the experimental one; he was the first to try anything, whether it worked or it didn't, and the quickest to notice and record what got her wet. Gansey deferred to him and to Blue: "Jane, was this what you liked?" or "Parrish, am I doing it right?" 

Now he curved his tongue around her clit and lapped there, rubbing one finger along the wet building between her folds, another method Adam had discovered and Gansey had decided to perfect for all of them. He licked down and in and Blue grabbed hold of his hair and pushed against his tongue, the sensation down there mounting. He obliged her by licking in deeper, moaning against her like he liked this as much as she did.

"Is it good, Jane?" he managed, lifting his head up briefly, still rubbing her with his fingers, crooking one _in_. She was wet enough now that the discomfort was far outweighed by want. It made her cry out and lock her legs around him again, force his head down. He obliged, licking, sucking, making everything wetter and more pleasant. Blue held his head with one hand and covered her mouth with the other, one part of her desperately worried that they would wake somebody else up.

Gansey's one comparative failing was that he wasn't as careful as Adam, who'd very quickly learned that Blue was sensitive down there. Gansey made up for this with enthusiasm, with humming, pleased breaths, and by giving Blue the wondrous impression that he wanted this. President Cell Phone, commanding and untouchable, really just a boy of seventeen who moaned when he licked Blue, who was strong when he held her and yet thanked her for the chance to do this.

Who didn't mind that when she came, it was wet and messy. 

He kissed her thigh when she was done, shuddering and sated. He and waited until her breathing had slowed to say, "I think I'll fall asleep right here between your legs, Jane."

"That's unusual," Blue managed.

"I don't mind being unusual if it's with you."

"I'd rather have you up here," Blue said, because it was true. He shifted cooperatively until he was lying with her rather than below her. Their lips were dangerously close and Blue didn't want to move away. It was his turn to cup a hand between their mouths and kiss her through his fingers. Blue wondered, sleepy and sated, what was so great about a regular kiss anyway.

Just before she fell asleep, he moved his legs a bit, and she could feel him through his pants, hard. She made what she thought were perfectly polite noises about sex between equals, thank you very much.

"Shhh," Gansey said, pulling her in. "Not in your mother's house, Jane."

Blue was vaguely irritated by this response, but fell asleep soon after.

-

Gansey and sleep were ever an uneasy match, and he was painfully hard. So he did not sleep now.

He dozed a bit, inconvenienced by his body and still shaken by the events of the day. He was in this state when his phone buzzed, the universe reminding him that it was perhaps best if he didn't stay in Blue's bed, where Maura Sargent would doubtlessly find him.

He checked the phone as he walked back downstairs to Adam. 3:57 am, Friday, June 1st. One text message. Ronan Lynch. 

_new phone who dis_.

Gansey squinted at it, perplexed. True, Ronan might not know. Gansey had seen him save Gansey's number as merely, "G." But this didn't feel like Ronan. This wasn't Ronan's style, and, cryptic contact information or not, Gansey hardly thought Ronan would forget who he was so soon. Ronan had paid off the police, quietly and without complaint, so that Gansey wouldn't receive a misdemeanor for criminal trespassing.

Gansey sat on the bottom step and texted back,

_looking for the wish king_

The response came barely a minute later.

_here he is, you fucking fag_

The picture was blurry and cut off before the face, but it was undeniably Ronan Lynch. No one else would have those tattooed vines curving in from his back, around the edges of his naked pelvis. Someone had nestled a small Irish flag and beer bottle into the curve of his leg, alongside his flaccid penis. On his stomach, in thick black sharpie, they'd written:

HAPPY HIGH SCHOOL DROPOUT DAY.


	8. Chapter 8

Blue woke, and for a moment she couldn't understand why Fox Way seemed so small, dear, and unbearably loud.

It had always been small. It was dearer now because a part of her, half-dreaming and unfocused, was thinking about what it meant to lose a home. And it was loud because at this very moment, in the kitchen, Richard Campbell Gansey III was being screamed at like a prize showhorse that was not performing well.

Blue went downstairs in a hurry. Gansey and Orla were wielding spatulas and battling for control of the stovetop. Calla sat to one side, urging Gansey on; Jimi to the other, supporting Orla. There were also several small cousins peeking in, possibly placing bets. Blue thought _pancake battle_ and _relay race_ and, already sure she didn't want to take part in it, went to the fridge to get some yogurt. 

Adam was sitting between the fridge and the back door. Something about him was still remote. Blue pulled her chair close to his, skirting Calla as she jumped up to berate Gansey better.

"Hi," Blue said softly.

Adam had removed his paper wristband, so he had nothing to pick at. His response came a little later than it had to. 

"Hi."

"How's your--" Blue gestured at his ear. 

He shook his head, like he was ridding himself of the question. He said, "Gansey said you saw the second ghost yesterday."

Blue filled him in on what had happened, trying to speak loud enough for him to hear, but low enough so that the other inhabitants of the kitchen wouldn't overhear. The results were mixed. At several points she thought she saw frustration cross Adam's face, as though he wasn't sure why he was wasn't understanding. But he never asked her to repeat herself and whenever she did his expression became cloudy.

He clearly processed enough that he could say, with finality, "So it is Whelk. We should go after him."

Before Blue could answer, a great shout came up from the stovetop. Orla had flipped and finished the requisite number of pancakes before Gansey had. She passed her spatula to Jimi. Calla shouted, "You're burning them, Richie Rich!" and grabbed the second spatula from Gansey, which was evidently a form of foul play because Orla and several small cousins protested.

Gansey somehow escaped the ensuing fight with his dignity and two plates of pancakes. His eyes found Adam at once, like this had all been for Adam's benefit.

"I think I was doing fairly well, don't you?"

Adam shrugged. Gansey passed him a plate. He caught Blue looking at him.

"That's much sillier than the things I normally do," he said, conscious of having stepped beyond the normal rules of being Gansey, whatever those rules were. "Also, I can't seem to not burn them."

Blue noticed that he'd taken from Orla's stack for himself and Adam. He pulled up his own chair now and sat with them. The first few minutes hurried along companionably as they ate, but then Adam said, "We know it's Whelk now. What are we going to do about it?"

Gansey had been cutting his pancakes with precise, reasonable motions and now he put down his fork in a precise, reasonable way; and his voice, when he spoke, was similarly reasonable and precise.

"I don't think we have enough information to do anything at the moment."

Adam snorted. "So we get information."

"Don't you think we have other problems right now?"

"We promised to do this, Gansey."

"We can't run into it. He _killed_ people."

Gansey's voice managed to make the emphasis plain without ever rising or losing its reasonable precision, and after a few slouching seconds, Adam looked away. His mouth was thin and unhappy.

"Hello, Adam," Persephone said, from the back door. Or maybe she asked. Adam was blocking the door with his chair and Persephone's words always managed to come out like she was lost and asking for directions. She came in now, or rather, her billowing hair and frothy dress did. The rest of Persephone probably did too, buried in there somewhere.

She paused between their three chairs and sighed for a bit. Blue, who was used to this, waited quietly until she was done. Adam and Gansey waited quietly too, but more out of surprise.

"Do you know if Calla and Maura can see him?" Persephone asked in a very small voice. Blue looked for Calla and her mother. Currently Calla was dropping bacon into a new bowl of pancake batter and Maura was drizzling butter on the pancakes Gansey hadn't burned.

"Maybe you can ask them?" she said. She wasn't sure who the _him_ was. 

Somewhere inside her cloud of hair, Persephone bit her lip.

"No," she said, after a minute. "He only has so much of himself left. He can't show it to everybody."

"Are you talking about Noah?" Adam said. "Sometimes we don't see him."

"When he's not with you, then he isn't," Persephone said. Gansey looked at her sharply, but now all her attention was on Adam. 

"He needs the line," she said. "So when it's being drained like this..."

She trailed off, making hazy motions that caught in the hazy whorls of her clothing. 

"It's being drained?" Gansey said.

Persephone floated past him and into place between Calla and Maura, as though she hadn't said anything notable at all.

But what she had said was enough to ignite the same fight Gansey and Adam had already been having, adding a new reason for Adam to argue for going after Whelk as soon as possible: saving the ley line. Blue and Gansey had work at Nino's today, and Adam waiting for Ronan Lynch, who would help him get his things from the double-wide and had promised to find a place Adam could stay. So there should have been more to talk about, but Gansey and Adam didn't seem interested in it. Blue caught them sniping about Whelk and the line as they brushed their teeth and changed. To act, or not to act. To wait, or not to wait. As if their two viewpoints were the only ones in the world. Neither of them asked her opinion on the matter, either. 

"You're both on the same team!" she finally snapped at them, as she cycled past the door to the downstairs bathroom while fixing her hair.

It that Gansey could sound so reasonable about being unreasonable, Adam so emotionless about being reckless. And she caught them looking at Orla a few times, too, which did not improve her mood, though it seemed to cheer Orla.

About ten minutes before she and Gansey had to leave, Ronan arrived. Calla answered the door. Her voice thundered about the house.

"Coca-cola! Someone's here to see you! He's tattooed a weapon on his back and it's strangling him from behind."

Adam stopped spitting retorts at Gansey long enough to emerge from the bathroom, uneasily tugging at the edge of his frayed t-shirt, the same one he'd been wearing since he'd left his parents' house. Ronan Lynch was silhouetted in the doorway, also uneasy, but his unease seemed to be about coming into the house at all. The morning light was soft and cocooning. Ronan's form rejected it utterly. After a minute he came in, fast about it, like he had to do it without thinking or not do it at all.

He did have a tattoo on his back. Blue had never noticed it before. It was a slicing, screaming kind of thing. Blue couldn't tell if it said _back away_ or _fuck you_. It didn't fit the Ronan who'd painstakingly combed through Aglionby yearbooks with her, and it probably didn't fit the Ronan who'd buried Noah, but it absolutely fit the Ronan of today. He went for the couch in the reading room, his aggressive energy making it seem three times smaller than it was. Then he tapped his enormous watch with its masculine black band and silver dials like flattened astrolabes. 

"Parrish, I don't have all fucking day," he said.

"What happened to you?" Blue said. His skin had an unhealthy sheen. She realized that Ronan Lynch always seemed like he had an edge of shimmering power, but today he looked like he'd bargained with the devil to get it. 

"I also wanted to talk about that."

Gansey came into the room, toweling off his face, bronzed and handsome in the low hall light. He, Adam, and Ronan combined made the entire house seem dingy rather than dear, three foreign species squaring off in three separate ways, and Fox Way nowhere near the right place to do it in. 

"Where were you?" Gansey demanded of Ronan. 

Ronan's upper lip quirked, a dangerous gesture. 

"Out, mom."

"Did you let someone play with your phone while you were out?"

Ronan's expression shifted a fraction, brought him closer to that rage that so characterized him. 

"Why do you care?" he said, too loud about it.

Gansey went very even instead of very loud. "Naturally I care. When someone is gone and potentially hurt--"

"So put my face on a fucking milk carton."

"Might be more appropriate to put it on a beer bottle."

Lynch was up, electric, enraged. Gansey didn't flinch for even a moment, but Adam did, after inserting himself between them, thin-lipped and blank about it. Blue was afraid of what might happen, but then Calla appeared.

"You! Snake!" she told Ronan. "You can wait outside if that's what you bring into this house."

Ronan threw his head back and offered several swears to the whole of Fox Way, but Calla was greater than he was, a lioness where he was only a lanky wildcat. He left to wait outside. Then Calla turned to Adam.

"You put your shoes on here. You can't make people wait even if they are snakes. And you--" now she whirled on Gansey, "--thanks for fighting all over our reading room, but we want it back now. Go upstairs to Blue's room to change. Don't look surprised. We all know you know where it is after last night."

Orla gave a horrible, squawking laugh from the kitchen. Blue rounded on Calla, her feelings zig-zagging from glad and grateful to downright conned, somehow. But Calla's arms were folded and her eyebrows were decidedly unimpressed.

"Your family is psychic, Blue," she said shortly.

There was no time to argue with that, only enough time to stomp up to her room to get her shoes, mood blacker than ever. She walked in on Gansey without knocking because it was _her_ room, and saw him pause in changing out of his pajamas, thrown. It was a brief victory. She was thrown herself by how he looked in the early daylight, a boy with marble-statue arms and tousled hair. He pulled on a t-shirt and Blue felt decidedly overwhelmed by the way it stretched across his chest.

When he was in a clean pair of khakis and had put on his Top Siders, he said, sounding apologetic, "I wasn't trying to fight with anyone, Jane."

"Look at you," Blue told him, getting her things together. "You don't even have to try."

His response was drowned out by the door banging open. Adam.

"Excuse me!" Blue said, affronted. She'd just done the same, but still. It was her room.

"Sorry," Adam said. He didn't seem sorry. His expression was bleak. His words came out clipped, efficient.

"I might not see you all for a while. I don't even know where this place is that Lynch found, if it's close or what. But let's not leave it like this."

He crossed to where Gansey was and, brisk about it, gestured at the bed and said, "Can we? Just quickly. I'd like to kiss you now, at least."

A part of Blue thought that a boy like Gansey, regal as he was, was not meant to be in a situation like this and, if he was, was not meant to give in. But he was in this situation and he did give in, dropping back onto Blue's bed and letting Adam grab his neck, pull him in for a kiss. Something uncomfortable blossomed in Blue, and for a moment she wondered if it was jealousy.

"Blue?" Adam said, pausing the kiss and turning his head briefly to catch her eye. "Do you want?"

No. She didn't. It was alarming how quickly the answer came to her. Normally she would want, but now it felt wrong. It felt like Adam didn't want what he said he did. This wasn't about wanting peace between them all; this was Adam stripped down to want, because everything else in his life had been taken away. It was cold and possessive, like he wasn't with friends, like he only wanted them to feel better about himself.

"I don't think we should do any of that right now," she told Adam. "Actually, I don't want either of you doing that in my room."

Adam flushed.

"So you weren't basically doing this last night?"

"This is different," Blue insisted. "You're making it _wrong_."

Now Gansey turned on her, putting a hand gently on Adam's chest and shifting him aside.

"Jane, he wants us to leave things in a good place. So do I."

"Does he?" Blue snapped. 

She didn't want to look at either of them. She gathered up her bag and ran down the stairs, heading straight for the Camaro at the curb. It was locked. She considered biking to Nino's because that would serve Gansey right, but then she caught sight of Ronan Lynch sitting in his BMW just a few spaces away.

She rapped furiously on the window. He had an elbow on the armrest, his head pillowed in his hand. He chin swiveled to look at her, slow and deliberate. Blue rapped until he lowered the window. Cold air and horrible electronic music assaulted her. Blue spoke over it.

"Don't you ever come into my house that way again!"

The rational part of Blue's brain knew that she was supposed to be afraid of boys like Ronan Lynch, but the rest of her was too angry to care. He stared at her like she really was a maggot, or some kind of small bug anyway, one that had learned how to talk, an amusing trick. Blue lost all of the appreciation she'd gained while looking through yearbooks with him.

"That's our home," she told him. "Maybe it doesn't look like a lot to you, but you will never, ever walk into it and try to start a fight again!"

She expected him to say something, but he didn't, though he did keep staring at her, face carefully blank.

"Well?" she demanded.

"Fine," he spat. The window closed. Blue stared at him through the tinted glass for a full minute before she realized that he'd agreed. That didn't feel right at all. Ronan Lynch had close to two feet and probably several millions on her. Blue was pleased that she'd stood up for herself and yet mistrustful of these results.

She didn't have much time to think about this. Adam now brushed past her on his way to the passenger side. He neither looked at nor spoke to her as he got in. Blue felt hurt, then angry again. Gansey was already at the Camaro, staring at her expectantly.

"Blue!" Maura called from the step.

Blue was almost relieved. This meant that she didn't have to call Adam to task. This meant that she didn't have to jump into the Camaro, obliging Gansey when he hadn't obliged her. All she had to do was turn and answer her mother.

But Maura only held out a toothbrush. Gansey's.

"He left it here," Maura said.

Blue blinked at her.

"He can't stay?"

Maura shot her an unimpressed look.

"AFTER LAST NIGHT YOU'D BETTER BET HE CAN'T STAY," Calla said from the inside.

"He lives in his _car_ ," Blue hissed.

"I wouldn't worry about that," Maura said cryptically.

"WE'RE PSYCHIC," Calla said.

Being reminded of that never cheered Blue up. She left for work still in a rage.

-

Adam's mother refused to acknowledge him as he packed his things, though admittedly that might have been because he'd brought Ronan back into the house.

Ronan refused to leave. He held Adam's threadbare duffel open as Adam piled things into it and then, when Adam had cleaned out everything that was worth anything and ignored anything (most of it) that wasn't, Ronan zipped it closed for him and hoisted it up.

It was heavy. And his head still pounded from last night. Adam said, "Let me," and Ronan batted him away, leaving him holding a cereal box and an old toy. Before he followed Ronan out, he ducked into a room off the side and shoved something into his cereal box. A last-ditch keepsake, Ronan thought.

They left the trailer. Ronan's shoes kicked up clods of dust on the way to the BMW. Then they were in and Ronan was forcing the overstuffed duffel into the backseat. His temples were screaming at him, but he didn't try to massage them quiet. He knew it wouldn't work. He leaned back on the headrest and stared at the roof of the car as Adam got in.

They were quiet the whole way to St. Agnes. Ronan had been tormenting his pounding head with music before they'd come to the trailer, letting the hooks jolt him and keep him awake, but now he didn't want to turn the stereo back on. Adam Parrish's breathing was too even, like he was thinking very consciously about it. Ronan didn't want to lose that careful sound. It was the best reminder he had that Adam was here with him. If he looked at Adam instead, he'd see him more distant than Adam should be.

Ronan didn't know how you went about explaining that you were sorry for getting someone evicted from their home, so he didn't try to explain. Also, he wasn't sorry. There were homes and then there was whatever the Parrish trailer was. Ronan knew enough about the former to divorce it neatly from the latter. St. Agnes was only about twenty minutes and ten miles away from the trailer, and Ronan thought that wasn't nearly enough distance to put between the two points.

When they got to the church, he ignored Adam's curious look and pulled out his phone, texting Gansey the address. He wrote the text before he pulled up his contacts and added Gansey in. He didn't want to see the message history. He'd woken to K slamming his phone against his hip, _wakey wakey, Lynch_. Ronan had had no acuity; for the first few minutes, he'd hardly realized he was still at K's house.

_Declan's been calling you. You should see the shit I texted him._

Ronan didn't want to. He dropped the phone now like it might start spitting poison and pulled the duffle out of the backseat. Adam still held his cereal box, long fingers tight around the dingy edges. 

"Stay here," Ronan instructed. "Let me tell the office."

It wasn't hard to convince any of the church staff to swap Ronan, an uneasy proposition, out for Adam, a hardworking local. Ronan would still be covering any unpaid rent, if Adam ever fell behind for some reason. Ronan would still sign whatever liability agreements they wanted. Only they'd be getting Adam as a tenant, and anything that meant Ronan Lynch wasn't moving in anymore had to be a benefit to them. St. Agnes was a church and meant to help the lost, but Ronan was out in the high weeds and didn't expect anyone to go looking for him. He'd let Adam Parrish take this lifeline. He secured their agreement and then went back to get Adam.

Adam spent a good thirty minutes talking over the particulars of rent and tenant duties without any idea that Ronan had just handled this in a tenth of the time.

After the first ten minutes, Ronan left him to it and took the duffle up to the room. It was an angular, unimpressive space, all strange corners and sloping roof. Ronan had been intending to move his own things in today, so there was nothing here now but a small fridge he'd already purchased, a smaller microwave, and a bed that dominated the center.

Ronan had made only the barest plans for the coming year. The plan was to sleep. The plan was to dream, with the pills if he had to. The plan was to dodge the night terrors. The plan was to make a new will.

The plan would have to be accelerated. He sat on the bed and waited for Adam. He wanted to go into the small bathroom and wash off his stomach, but he didn't want to look at it again. This morning he'd caught sight of it and hadn't known how to make his hands stop trembling. 

When Adam came in he said, "thank you," very clearly. There were several emotions in the thank you: shame, anger, the hope that Ronan would leave soon. Ronan didn't want to leave. He didn't know how to argue back, propose a countermeasure. Ronan's father had been a liar and a braggart but good with words, and Ronan had inherited most of him but not any of those things. So he didn't know what to say now. He didn't want to stop sneaking looks at the odd lines of Adam's face.

Not just his face. The fault lines in him. What Ronan had done yesterday had cracked open Adam's life, four-point-one on the Richter scale.

"You need to unpack?" Ronan asked him.

He didn't wait for an answer, because the answer would be that Adam didn't want his help. So Ronan spoke over himself instead, tight and furious.

"I could show you the bathroom."

Adam stared at him.

"Right," he said, after one eternal second. "Sure."

Ronan led him around the bed and into the tiny bathroom. There wasn't a lot to show here but Ronan showed it anyway, pulling back the cheap plastic sheet to reveal a four-foot tub, a low shower. Tapping on the toilet lid. Pulling open the mirrored vanity. Saluting the cross nailed to the wall, with its dying Jesus. Playing with the taps on the sink. If he kept moving he didn't have to think about any of this, but pretty soon he'd used up everything there was to touch. The room was compact and very empty.

He reached into his pocket. Last night he'd taken K's usual, green and familiar. He'd entered sleep like an intruder, a splinter dug under the skin. The will. The will. It wasn't enough. He didn't wake with a will but with a key, familiar and old, just like the key to his father's old office at the Barns. It was tacky and filthy, covered in blood and mud. Ronan had turned it over in his hands, horrified at how he'd dirtied it.

Now he took it out of his pocket and washed it under the taps. Adam stared at it.

"What's--"

"Housewarming present," Ronan said.

He took Jesus down and rested Him on the windowsill, horizontal in His holy nightmare. Then he put the key on the nail. It was massive with Celtic loops and heavy iron. The original had probably been a dream too.

"I--" Adam Parrish said. "Thanks."

This thanks didn't ask Ronan to leave. It was awkward and surprised, that was all. Ronan nodded at it and went out to unpack the duffel. He would have stopped doing it if Adam had asked him to, but Adam didn't, so Ronan was left with piles of dingy coveralls, tattered t-shirts, textbooks and cargo pants and a single Aglionby sweater, fraying at the shoulders.

Adam took this and hung it on a peg behind the door, but everything else he ignored, like it didn't really suit him and he'd never wanted it. Adam wanted to be more than the effects of the trailer. Adam was, or at least he could be. Ronan sat next to him on the bed now, fists on his knees, and tried to think of what to say. The silence strangled him. He wished there was a radio up here so that they could play something loud and offensive.

"So you're into racing?" he said.

Boyd had said that. Boyd had said something close to it. Rage engulfed the part of Ronan's mind that couldn't remember the specifics.

"What?" 

"Boyd said he invited you to fix racecars or some shit."

"Oh. Yeah. For this summer. I said no. I don't want to do that with my life."

The followup question there was easy, and Declan would have snagged it. Even Matthew would have known to ask it. Gansey probably had asked it, sincere and interested.

 _So what_ do _you want to do?_

Ronan didn't really want to know. Adam Parrish was obviously not at Aglionby because he wanted to stay in Henrietta. Adam wasn't planning stay anywhere nearby, nor did he have to. Ronan clenched his fists so hard he thought his nails would break the skin.

He'd dreamed an Adam once who'd belonged at the Barns. Those were the dream-rules: you could wear belonging in a dream like a coat, like a mask. He'd dreamed of Adam wearing a mask as well, but that had been a dream for the night horrors and this was the opposite. Adam at the Barns had eyes sharp with promise, ghost-blue veins on his clever hands. He was poised on the front step, his arms welcoming, his expression not really his. Too open for that.

Ronan hadn't wanted him. Not like he wanted the Adam here at St. Agnes. The dream Adam had been only the face of Adam Parrish, plucked from the boy on the other side of the Latin classroom. The rest of him had been something that Ronan had known, absolutely known, he could make real in an instant, because Ronan himself had invented him.

But the dream Adam had little of what drew Ronan to the real one. 

"Come on," Ronan said, standing up. "Let's go. I have to show you something."

It would be a bad idea for this Adam to follow him, and yet Ronan thought that he would follow. There was something reckless in him. Ronan understood that. He led Adam down the stairs now, through a door marked _staff only_ , down a hall to where the food pantry for the church was. St. Agnes stored the refrigerated food up here and gave it out to the needy twice a month. The needy were expected to wait on the ground floor. There were a few abandoned bins, each big enough to fit two people, and a small chute with rails and pulleys for the food to travel on. 

"Get in," Ronan told him.

"Is this for laundry?" Adam asked, confused.

"You'll find out. Get in."

"I can't do this. They'll kick me out."

"Nah. Get in."

"This is a bad idea."

Adam got in. Ronan wanted to get in after him so badly it made him furious, but instead he leaned in to make sure the bin was steady on the rails. He brushed Adam's hair with his nose. This close, Adam smelled like sweat and gasoline, a little metallic. He held to the edges of the bin and Ronan pushed him off, then lined up another bin and climbed in to follow him. The ride was fast and tight and dark and Ronan scraped his arm on the edge of the chute and tasted blood when the bin hit the ground. He climbed out in the darkened pantry office. Adam sat nearby, on a bag of rice that some local business had donated, nursing a scrape on his elbow.

"They hand out food here?" Adam said.

Ronan nodded.

"Would have been good to know when..." Adam said, but trailed off, something in him going stubborn. Ronan licked along his cut lip and started poking along the shelves, familiar with the place because his mother had volunteered here back when she'd still been awake. He could feel Adam's gaze on him after a moment.

"Stop looking at me," Ronan said. He didn't want that from Adam Parrish if he couldn't have Adam Parrish. 

Adam had Gansey and Blue Sargent. It felt deeply strange, something too new for Ronan to process, something that he'd bitterly assumed was casual, at first. But Gansey didn't talk about it like it was casual. He talked about like words failed him when he thought of Adam and Blue, like he replaced chatter with true belief. There was nothing Ronan could do about something like that. Ronan didn't want to be someone who would disrupt that. He'd let his heart burn and bear it.

He found a bin of cans too dented to give out and started kicking them at the wall, denting them more. Each made a satisfying crack. He didn't stop doing it until he looked up and saw Adam wincing, touching a hand to one ear like he thought it wasn't working right. 

Well. It wasn't working right.

"How do we get out of here?" Adam asked, looking around at all the overstuffed shelves. Ronan shifted aside a bin of pasta and pointed at the door, but then said, "It's right by the main office, though." 

He pointed at the chute instead, the only other entrance.

Adam squared his shoulders, nodded, and then stood and braced both hands against the edge of the chute. He began to climb back up. Ronan gave him a few minutes, then followed. They were dangerously quiet once they reached the top, as if afraid to be caught out, but when they were back in Adam's room Adam looked at Ronan and said, "Thanks," for the third time, and this felt like the truest thanks yet.

Ronan nodded at it, calmed now.

"Can I ask?" Adam said, "Why are you moving me into your church?"

Ronan shrugged. Adam Parrish's fault lines predated Ronan Lynch coming into his life with a four-point-one on the Richter scale, and they both knew it. But Adam deserved to make it anyway. Ronan didn't know him and didn't expect anything from him, but he wanted that for Adam.

He didn't say this. Instead he pointed out, "I'm the one who broke into your house and beat the shit out of your dad."

He looked straight at Adam Parrish as he said it, taking in the typical Henrietta cheekbones and deep-set eyes. On Adam it was all formed atypically somehow, something strange written into his bones. Ronan liked that. For a moment he could no longer be easy about Adam and his friends, and jealousy crushed him. 

So when he next spoke, it was a snarl.

"You going to invite Dick to move in with you?"

It only made sense. Adam would have hit on the idea soon enough anyway, Ronan was only speeding it up. Ronan was driving his jealousy to a place where it sputtered out completely and gave way to truth.

"I--" Adam began.

"Whatever," Ronan said. "I have to go."

He didn't want to hear the confirmation. He went back to the BMW and then to Aglionby. Declan was there, arguing with the headmaster about moving Ronan's things, his rage barely-controlled, his face even more banged up than it had been when Ronan had left him yesterday. Ronan blinked at it, wondering who he'd tangled with.

K was there too, waiting in Ronan's room, on Ronan's bed.

"Proko can move your stuff, man, just say the word," he told Ronan lazily.

Ronan sat down next to him, head in his hands. It bothered him that some days he didn't know what this was between him and K, that the sound of Dick Gansey's voice when he talked about Adam was realer and better than this. It bothered him that some days he knew all too well what this was.

K's skeletal finger jabbed him in the stomach. Ronan reacted, shoving him hard against the wall. K started laughing.

"Come on, fucker, you were always going to move in with me," he said.

"I'll move my stuff," he told K. "Keep Proko out of it."

-

Blue Sargent could stay mad for a good long while if she set her mind to it, and Gansey would not insult her by telling her she had to stop at some point.

She did have to stop at some point. Gansey's mother had always said that rage was the cheapest and most transient of emotions, and in Gansey's experience this was true. But for now, Blue was angry with him and angry with Adam, and it was going to bother Gansey all day. He wasn't sure where he'd mis-stepped. He suspected it didn't matter. He'd upset her; that was enough to stew over.

"I'm going to go by Adam's new place to make sure he's settling in," he told her after work. "You can come, or I can drive you home first if you'd prefer."

He didn't know what he needed to apologize about, so he didn't follow this with an apology. Blue picked at her shredded, strategic kind of top and said, "Fine. Let's go see Adam."

Adam was waiting on a bench in front of the church. He looked less at sea than he had this morning or the night before and Gansey was intensely glad for it. Gansey didn't like to see the fight go out of him.

"This is the place Ronan found for you?" Gansey asked, after he'd parked and they'd walked up to greet him. "His church?"

It was intimate in a way Gansey found strange, real, and oddly kind. He wanted Ronan here so that he could ask about it. And so that he could ask about other things too: the text last night, the time they'd found him bleeding. But Ronan was gone and Adam was looking up at him and Blue with his brows drawn tight, the line between them screaming worry.

He and Adam had something now. So Gansey pressed his thumb to the line until he'd rubbed it away. Adam stared up at him, surprised.

"That alright?" Gansey asked. 

Adam hesitated long enough for Gansey to kick himself over the casual intimacy. Then Adam said, "Gansey, I talked to the church staff and they say it's alright if you move in too."

Gansey wasn't sure he'd heard that right. By the time he'd assured his mind that he had, Adam had moved on to Blue.

"Is that all right?" 

She gaped at him.

"Why wouldn't it be?"

Adam directed his snort away from Blue, at the wide, green lawn in front of them. 

"You want to be consulted, right?" he asked. 

Blue looked caught out. She obviously did, but didn't want to say that she did. 

Gansey said, gently, "Maybe we should discuss this in your new apartment."

He didn't think they could discuss GanseyAdamBlue, AdamBlueGansey here on the lawn of a Catholic Church. Adam led them upstairs. Gansey tried not to cycle back to his previous offer -- it's alright if you move in too -- but this was difficult. He hadn't lived in the Camaro for very long. He hadn't let himself really think about living in the Camaro, about how he felt about it, about whether it bothered him. 

It bothered him. He was very, very tired of living in his car. It felt like he was betraying the Camaro, considering moving in with Adam, and yet he couldn't be sorry for it. There was absolutely nothing memorable about the apartment Adam led them to, but it had four walls and bed and a bathroom with a shower and Gansey could have cried.

"Look," Adam was saying to Blue. "You're mad. I really don't want us to fight, Blue--"

"Well, do you genuinely like us or do you just want to make yourself feel good?" Blue snapped.

From the look on Adam's face, this sliced him to his spine. Gansey didn't want this to escalate, not when he was here in an apartment with four dingy walls that he and Adam might call their own. 

"I don't mind if he wants to use me to make himself feel good, Jane," he told Blue. "He can use me all he likes."

Adam's expression became stark and uncomfortable.

"Use you?" he asked, his voice disbelieving.

"Right!" Blue said, throwing up her hands. "Exactly. See?"

Gansey blinked.

"Exactly what?"

He didn't think he'd said anything unusual. Adam did not have a great deal in his life to make him feel good. Gansey might have lost everything and Blue might be poor, but they'd been loved. Adam never had been. If he wanted to reach for affection harder than the rest of them, then Gansey wouldn't deny him.

Adam passed a hand over his face and the trees outside the apartment's one small window cast shadows on his hand, so that he was buried layer upon layer.

"What do _you_ want, Gansey?" he asked through his hands.

"Not for you to stop wanting me," Gansey said firmly. "Mostly I want us to stop fighting, and I want to stop Whelk and get the line back so that Noah stops fading out, and I suppose it would be nice to know where Ronan Lynch is."

Aside from that, only the two of them. That was all he wanted. He sat on the bed and looked at them, hoping he wouldn't have to say it.

They both looked exasperated with him.

"What do you want for _you_?" Adam demanded.

"You," Gansey said. "And Jane, of course."

To know that he meant something to them, to know that they were here with him and safe. To be more than the person who'd overlooked them, to be the person they could look _to_. To know that they saw him for who he was now, not for the money he'd had or things he had lost. 

And sometimes at night he'd think that he wanted a phone call from Helen, just one last time; or that he wanted to see his mother tap her fingers to her pearl earrings in that pensive way she had. He'd think that he wanted to never again feel the way he had the night they'd taken all his things away, not because he missed the things, but because the thought of panic crushing his chest tight still scared him. But he didn't say any of these last things, because Adam had lost his home and Blue had opened hers up to him, and so he couldn't ask either of them to take this on. He said only the most important things.

"I want the two of you, here," he said. "Isn't that enough?"

He looked between them. He couldn't read Adam's expression, but Blue looked very sad for some reason.

"Jane," he said. "Please don't look like that."

He held out his arms and she came to him. He wanted to kiss her very badly. Instead he rested his head on her hair and looked at Adam like this.

"Can one of you please tell me what this is about, because I think I lost the thread," Gansey said.

Adam shook his head, but less like he didn't know and more like he was trying to clear it of something. When he spoke, it was a confession.

"I don't get to touch people a lot. I guess I want it too bad or something."

Blue's head shot up.

"That's not it!" she said. "You didn't want what you said you did. You said you wanted to stop fighting, and you don't. You still want to go after Whelk right away, don't you?"

Adam looked away. 

Blue said. "We're your _friends_. You can ask us for comfort, and maybe that's sex, but we're more than just the people you have sex with sometimes. We want truth from you. We want you to be our friend."

She trailed off, sounding too miserable to make her words work properly. If she sounded that way, then Adam looked it.

"I know he's more than something for me to want. I know you are, too."

"Do you?"

There was an awkward silence.

"Not always," Adam admitted, shaking his head. He looked so blank that Gansey wanted to go to him, but Adam backed away. He looked past Gansey to Blue. He said, "You're right that you're both more than that."

Blue nodded and then silence descended again.

Gansey broke it. 

"Is this resolved?" he asked. He felt as though he only understood half of what had occurred, and he didn't like that. It was another language to him, complicated politics of want that Gansey had never bothered to consider. 

Adam ignored his question.

"Can you--" he told Blue, his voice rough and thick with his accent. "I just wanna -- Look. He likes it when you hold him. So can you just--"

Gansey certainly did like it when Blue held him, but he wouldn't have thought Adam had noticed that. But now Blue scooted back onto the bed until she was sitting against the headboard. 

"Here," she said, patting her lap. Gansey was still unsure of what was going on, but he trusted that lap. He regarded that lap with the utmost adoration. He went to it, sitting so that she spooned him, her arms warm around his shoulders. Gansey relaxed into the embrace and watched Adam divest himself of his clothing. He was gaunt and fair in the light and Gansey felt a swell of possessiveness that he could never admit to. Adam wouldn't think kindly on it.

Then Adam was between his legs, unbuttoning his khakis and pulling down his underwear. 

"Adam--" Gansey said, but Adam was already taking Gansey in his mouth, faster than was wise. He choked a bit initially. Alarmed, overwhelmed, Gansey tried to pull his head back but Adam batted him away. He was more measured on the second try, his mouth hot and wet around the tip of Gansey's penis, and Gansey found himself groaning into Blue's shoulder. He ran his hands over Adam's dusty hair. It took all his strength of will not to grab Adam and direct him. He didn't want to direct him. He wanted Adam to have control after the fight; somehow it wouldn't seem right if he didn't, never mind how much it bothered Gansey to not quite know what might happen next.

He wasn't bothered for long. Adam pulled off and licked along the shaft, so that Gansey got both the licks and the phenomenal vista of his pink tongue, his elegant face. Adam was spread out on his stomach, long and fair, and Gansey couldn't understand how Blue managed to keep from kissing this boy. He tried to ask her, but what came out was another groan. Adam had taken him back into his throat this time, deeper now. He was really properly sucking now, and he'd never done this before, clearly, because now and then he still choked a bit. Worry for him warred with the pleasure he was bringing Gansey. Gansey stroked his hair again and told him, "That's it, Tiger. Marvelous. You're doing marvelous," until Adam was sucking so wetly and perfectly that Gansey couldn't form the words anymore.

Adam didn't move away when it was time for him to come. Gansey felt a bit ashamed of himself. When he was done Gansey went to get a trash can from the corner of the room. He held it out to Adam so that he could spit and Adam did, with a vaguely puzzled look on his face like he hadn't been expecting whatever Gansey tasted like. Gansey ran a hand through his dusty hair again.

"What else should we do?" Adam asked, once he'd rid his tongue of the worst of it.

"I think that was more than enough--"

"Gansey," Blue said. He turned to her. She was pulling off her shredded shirt. With Blue just the glimpse of her collarbone could overwhelm him, or the touch of her wrist. To have this much of her very suddenly, right after having _Adam_ , made every thought a beam of light, ephemeral, nothing he could grasp. He was wordless and delighted.

He wanted to kiss her. He wanted to taste her again. He wanted to lick along Adam's ass again, and he wanted to do for Adam what Adam had just done for him. He settled for this last one. It seemed the most appropriate.

"You help Jane," he told Adam, directing him onto his back. "Jane, on him, please."

Miraculously, they did as he said. Gansey was beyond grateful for this, and for the picture they presented, Blue straddling Adam's chest, Adam's hands steady on her thighs. Gansey came up behind her and shifted open Adam's legs.

"Like this?" Adam said, "Gansey, I want you to want--"

"This is what I want," Gansey said. "You're always what I want, Adam."

He leaned in to take Adam in his mouth, knowing all the while that Adam was pleasing Blue. This was what he wanted: having them here, his. Having a place now for the three of them. 

He proved that he was as new at this as Adam was, and not so quick to get it right, but quicker to swallow. And he went to bed that night curled into Adam. Outside their window, Henrietta winked at him. The ley line waited, Noah's restoration waited, and Gansey felt his heart twist with all he'd somehow gained, and how badly he wanted to be worthy of it. 

-

Ronan lost track of the days.

K didn't deal in days, but in the acidic, metallic taste of nights. He made Ronan live night-to-night now, the rent Ronan paid for moving into the subdivision. K gave him his home, but this had never been a favor, a gift for Ronan. Ronan couldn't totally trust anything K gave him. K crushed pills to put into his mother's smoothies; and with Ronan he was nearly as bad. Ronan would grab a bottle of water, rinse his teeth with K's mouthwash, leave a burger unattended for half a second. And he'd hear K laughing as he was smashed into sleep, set to thieving another night. Again. And again. And again. 

He'd hear K laughing as he woke up, too.

"You still don't have it?"

Underneath the constant smash-awake, smash-awake, Ronan was furious, but underneath his fury there was a vivid ribbon of irritation. He had until the third week of June, and so K was wasting Ronan's fucking time. When he finally did wake up, ravenous, dreams trailing out of his head and back to Cabeswater like jungle vines, K was sitting on his thighs. K's neck was mottled with bruises and his chest shot through with red scratches. He shot Ronan the finger when he caught him looking. Ronan's pants were undone, and he was sick of the way his fingers shook whenever he tried to do them up, so he didn't try that now. He shoved K off of him, hard. 

K's teeth smacked the floor with the hollow sound of thousands in dental care destroyed. Ronan licked his own teeth and found them fuzzy. He frowned and lurched up for the bathroom -- any bathroom, the house had four or five -- where it took a solid ten minutes to find a toothbrush among the shattered vodka bottles and blackened sponges and forty-five dollar cakes of soap. McMansion wonderland.

When he came back, K said, "I'm tired."

Tired was bad. Tired meant K asleep. Ronan was tired too, because even if he hadn't been quite conscious, nothing about the past few days had been restful.

But then K said, "Tired of this, man. What the fuck is this?"

It took Ronan an extra few minutes to realize all the things strewn around K: radios made of crystal, sheaths of corn with every kernel a literal pearl, neon tennis rackets that gave off a smoky glow. K picked one of these up and smashed it into the floor until it broke into pieces.

"You know what I brought back? A will, man. Fifty fucking wills. I'm spewing wills and you can't even get your dick up."

Ronan wouldn't take a will made by K. He left K to his smashing and went down to the kitchen. His stomach was crawling into his throat in search of food. He passed the fridge and rooted around in his pockets for the keys to the BMW. 

He drove to the Wendy's off the main highway and ate enough greasy burgers to fill even Matthew. His phone was lit and alive, a procession of texts from Gansey. He used a corner of it to grind the pills in his pockets to powder. After all these dreaming nights, Cabeswater would be gone. Drained. Gansey had become the forest's most ardent visitor. He'd know it was gone.

Because time was cracked and malfunctioning, it was night again when Ronan made it back to the subdivision. K was planning for a party, which meant that Proko was loading fireworks and kegs into one of the two identical Mitsubishis in the four-car garage. He made a gurgling sound as Ronan passed him, like something was broken.

"I'm not going out to the fairgrounds tonight," Ronan told K, who was sitting on the hood of a ruined red pony car he seemed to have indeterminate plans for. Ronan frowned at it. It was the Camaro through a glass.

"Who said anything about the fairgrounds?" K said. The usual plan had no edge anymore. They'd razed the fairgrounds time and time again, smashed its sterile floodlights, exploded its colorless bunting. The ground there was pockmarked with so many party-wounds that it was dead land now.

K slapped a magazine on the hood between them, the kind they gave out at local restaurants, the kind that was stuffed with realtor ads. He circled a listing with one skeletal finger.

HUGE 7000 sq. ft. factory, wonderful old bones, needs some upkeep.

The picture was of a building on its knees and about to give up. Ronan could picture the miscellaneous machinery inside, secret and hideous, the nuclear furniture, the fuzz of chipped paint on the floor.

"This needs to be put out of its misery," K said, jabbing at the picture with a thumb. "Come on."

They took the pony car. Locals were already gathered by the rusted gates to the factory. Jiang was there. Skov was there. Swan was possibly on his knees and already vomiting into the high grass by the road, or maybe that was someone else. The night was secure in its blackness until K gave an unearthly shriek and produced a flare, tossing it over the fence and letting it smash through the second story of the building. Delighted screams went up. K pulled a key out of his pocket and unlocked the padlock on the gates, throwing them open. His cheeks were waxy and hollow in the light from the burning upstairs windows, a god of pandemonium. People poured into the lot around him. He grabbed for Ronan's shoulder.

Ronan stepped back.

"Get the shit from the car," K said.

"I'm not your dog," Ronan said.

K shrugged like he didn't believe it, but he snapped his fingers in the direction of Proko, pulling up now in a Mitsubishi.

This was K's power, those substances in the car. He said he expected people to bring their own but this was cursory, a penalty levied because a penalty had to be levied. K was only interested in what he dreamed for himself; anything you could buy, barter for, or cook up in a lab was pedestrian by comparison.

Ronan pushed past him now and entered the field, where sparks rained down from the windows and caught on the grass. This was a dangerous place to hold a substance party and that was exactly why K did it. From here, you could walk to the spires of St. Agnes, you could see the industrial zone further along the valley. You could make it to Nino's in ten minutes and Aglionby in twelve. This was the heart of the town, and tonight K would burn it up.

Something inside the building groaned miserably, and the crowd already swarming around the ground floor pushed to get inside and salvage things before there was a total collapse. The air reeked of burning floor tiles and pot. The flames on the upper story seemed to be calming down, but they'd charred the name on the building. Now it said: MONMOUT NUFACTURING.

Ronan didn't want what K had to offer but he wanted something, so he found a crowd of locals out back, gleefully attacking a piece of machinery they'd liberated from the inside of the building. They'd brought whiskey; that was more than enough. Ronan snagged it as they danced like goblins around the wreckage. He heard cars because there were always cars, and then the unmistakable sound of a crash come too early in the night. He saw Aglionby alums from New Haven and Princeton, back for the event. Wherever he walked he seemed in danger of tripping on people in the grass, dull-eyed, screaming, writhing to the music that came from too many stereos at once. A police car slowed just beyond the gates, then kept going. K's credit line was extensive, and his dominance over this kind of thing complete.

Time kept shattering. Ronan used to burn at K's parties, burn and like it, but now he got diminishing returns. The fire on the second floor had gone out, he thought, so he ducked into the ground floor, where sterile white lights had been set up in corners. Someone was pounding out a rhythmic beat and the bodies were endless and distorted with movement. Ronan pushed through them, trying to give in. Electric. Electric. If he thought of it like it was real, he could make it real. 

But nothing in him lit up until he exited the building and saw the figure standing in the glow of twenty-foot fireworks, between the rusted gates.

Gansey. His hair was mussed and he was half-out of his greasy work clothes, in a thin undershirt with the arms of his coveralls wound around his waist. The glacial tilt to his expression was unrecognizable. Ronan mistakenly took it for superiority, but then Gansey caught sight of him and it wasn't just that.

Ronan couldn't seem to go electric, but Gansey was there already. He hadn't been the tidy, powerful king of Aglionby for weeks, but now he'd shed even the mannered control that normally characterized him. Ronan watched him accept a makeshift Molotov cocktail someone handed him and toss it not at the building but at a pile of factory detritus near the fence. It was a clever maneuver. The pile had held no one's attention, abandoned, useless. Now it erupted, shivering bolts over the grass, drawing a foolish crowd. 

Ronan's mouth went dry. 

"Jesus," Gansey said, coldly admiring the whole scene, not just his own handiwork. "What a thing to find on my way home from work. Is this why the cops are so used to taking your money?"

Ronan shrugged, caught. He offered Gansey the mostly-empty bottle. Gansey finished it the contents, the skin of his throat gold in the light.

"Whelk is draining the line," he told Ronan, when he'd finished. 

Whelk wasn't the one draining the line.

Before Ronan could confess, there was another crash behind them and this time a shower of sparks, a noise like the magnified sound of bones breaking. A shout, unmistakably K's. Ronan turned and someone had driven the pony car into one of the building's walls. The factory shuddered, but held. The car was destroyed, and K directed people to the flames. 

"Well, do you like the show or not, bitch?" he asked a girl who was hanging back. Powder dusted his nose. He was too high to put much threat in his tone, but the threat felt like it was there, waiting. 

When he caught sight of Gansey he started to laugh. 

"Gansey!" he said, like it was a victory. "Where's Parrish? Doesn't he get lonely when he can't suck your balls?"

Gansey regarded him with enough silent contempt to fill a moment, then turned and smashed the whiskey bottle against a rusted desk lying on its side nearby. Shards flew up. One caught Gansey's forearm, nicking it, and he stared at the nick with disdain. In his hands now he held the dangerous remains, a weapon wild enough for this version of him.

K threw up his hands.

"Woah, lady, what's our safe word?"

"I want to talk to Ronan," Gansey said, every vowel crisp and contemptuous.

A hand fluttered up to K's hollow chest. " _Ronan_." He made a filthy gesture; his hipbones stuck out jagged.

"Go," Gansey commanded.

"Alright, fag," K said, rolling his eyes. He went. Ronan was left with this glorious, wild Gansey. He wondered fleetingly if Gansey would join in the destruction, if Gansey would lead it. This Gansey seemed like he could and would do anything, but instead his warm fingers closed on Ronan's shoulder and steered him.

"Are you sober?" Gansey asked, his voice hard.

Ronan flattened his palm and waved it at the ground. So-so. Gansey looked over his shoulder at the old factory, under assault from all comers.

"That's a waste," he said.

Then he was propelling Ronan across the road and into the Camaro. Ronan's brain tilted dangerously as he got in, the shift in altitude, maybe, or the way the world was distorted by firework pinwheels in the rearview mirror. Gansey brought the car to life and stepped on the gas, but he didn't take them to St. Agnes. They were driving fast down neon-lit streets and Ronan leaned back in his seat, thinking of what it would be like to race in this car, feeling the bite of adrenaline that came from the person next to him.

This Gansey was wild and heedless. It was retreating now, but Ronan thought he could still catch it in the corners.

"Adam's at work and Jane won't like being called for this," he told Ronan, as he pulled into the Nino's lot and parked. He let Ronan into the darkened restaurant, easy and possessive of it, like any place he found could be his kingdom. Ronan waited in a booth while he strode into the back, returning with a battered first aid kit. He popped it open and regarded his filthy forearm, then the contents of the kit. He frowned. He was bloodied and every inch an attainable boy. Ronan exhaled hard. He wanted to break this table. He settled for flattening himself against the wall of the booth instead.

Gansey held out some gauze.

"Your neck," he said.

Ronan touched a hand to it. There was blood there. He had no idea how he'd cut himself. He had no idea what he was supposed to do with the gauze. Neither did Gansey. They were both drawn to the innards of the kit, pulling things out and comparing. The end result was a mishmash of bandaids and tape and the hissing sensation of disinfecting cream. Gansey slid into the seat across from him when this was done, briefly touching a tanned hand to his exposed collarbone.

"You know that kind of thing doesn't matter, right?" he said, nothing warm about his smile. It was a demand. _That doesn't matter._

Ronan knew what mattered to Gansey, because he was discovering, remarkably, that it was the same kind of thing that mattered to him. Cabeswater. The line. Noah. Adam Parrish. 

Gansey sat back, in a pose like he was Chairman of the Board, and waved a tanned forearm at him. 

"Are you and Kavinsky, you know." 

There was no question mark. The _you know_ made Ronan think back to the roll of K's hips. It was a polite formality, and this unsafe Gansey was drawing on his last reserves of control to extend this to Ronan.

"Have you gotten checked?" 

Ronan blinked at him. 

"For diseases," Gansey clarified.

Ronan started laughing. It was uncontrollable, shattering, like taking a pill or landing a punch or realizing a dream. He felt so present that he wondered if he would end up breaking the table. Anything to stop this conversation. His mind skittered away from whatever Gansey was assuming. It wasn't like that. Ronan was so out of himself usually that he couldn't know if he'd said yes or no or what he'd said to K at all, let alone what might have actually happened.

"Have _you_ gotten checked?"

"With Adam and Blue? Unnecessary," Gansey said. "I'm their first. They'd be in more danger of catching something from me than me from them."

Ronan's mind refused to wonder who else Gansey had been with and what he'd done, refused to wander to the promise of Gansey's tanned collarbones and what he looked like in an undershirt. And his laughter didn't stop, so Gansey reached across the table and steadied his shoulder again, a command in the gesture.

"Ronan. Why do you hang out with him? He doesn't care about anything. You do."

K had been there, that was why. K had been the ghoul at the edges of Ronan's loss, there with a bag of powder or a crashing car when Ronan had thought he needed it. He'd needed _something_ ; Niall's loss had been at least a four-point-one. So it had taken Ronan some time to realize that he didn't really like K, not really.

Specifically, it had taken until Ronan had finally done what K had always said he should do: contravene the will. He'd gone home. It was less than twenty minutes away from this shitty town, and when Ronan thought of it he wanted to be back at the substance party, smashing things with abandon. He could almost smell the hickory smoke and lemon cleaner, see the shabby farmhouse with all its comforts, the blossoms and fruit trees that enveloped the drive.

Home.

Briefly, too briefly, Ronan had felt light. Then enraged. But his rage had no outlet; there was nothing at the Barns that he would sacrifice to it. Everything was still in its place -- Niall's hat on its peg, smelling of him; the cats asleep under the porch; the cows and mice in their hay; the fish slumbering deep at the bottom of the pond. His mother in her bed, unattended, because everyone knew she didn't really need a nurse. She would sleep and sleep and sleep. Declan and Niall had known that.

Ronan had been bent over her, smoothing her hair, when K had tapped on the door frame. Ronan hadn't even heard the Mitsubishi come down the drive.

_What happens if I feed a pill to one of your fucking cows, man?_

It was both expected and wrong, like the white bone line of his father's collarbone. Ronan had shoved him away, a small part of him still thinking -- hoping -- that K's wild laughter would wake something in his mother. It hadn't. In the kitchen, K had found the toaster and removed it to a sink full of water and sleeping mice. It didn't electrocute because it didn't run that way, but the general experiment was clear. The instruments upstairs had all been moved and played and some dropped from the landing, probably to see if they bounced. The mirror in the front hall was scrawled with Aurora's peach lipstick: WELCOME HOME. 

Ronan had hit him so hard that the crack reverberated through the walls. He'd only stopped when K had stumbled through the door, out to the drive. Ronan had looked across the gravel and seen someone else there, and though his fury had grown immeasurably, he hadn't been able to keep punching. 

Even after Niall's death, the Barns was holy ground, sacrosanct down to its last blade of grass. K had never had that. He didn't speak the language. That was forgivable. What wasn't forgivable was that Ronan had never found in him the impulse to learn it. K was clever and experimental, but his vision extended only as far as destruction. Ronan didn't want him at the Barns.

But after that the threat was always there. Ronan would hesitate to do a line, or get in a car, or down a pill. And K would produce sly, familiar things: the ever-blooming flowers from the hall, the purring blanket from the basement, the unending tin of chocolate-chip cookies Matthew had always hidden under his pillow. Ronan would think for a moment that they were the real thing. Then K would smash them or set them on fire, and Ronan would rush back to the Barns in a rage only to find the originals still there.

They were clever copies. K remembered and replicated with ease.

_Hope they don't find you going back there, man._

_You_ sent _me there_.

_How else are you going to keep your motivation up? When you get your farm back, Lynch--_

_Don't. You're not going to be there._

Ronan didn't want him there. Ronan couldn't forgive himself for leading K there in the first place. But it became easier, after a while, to take K's pills, snort K's lines, get in K's cars. He just hadn't planned on becoming dependent. He felt jerked around, a marionette. He didn't know what K planned for the anniversary. He didn't want the third week of June to come. He wanted his home back and his family back; that was all.

"Ronan," Gansey repeated now. "Why do y--"

"I need him," Ronan said. "He's got the stuff I need."

The colorless pills hadn't done anything. Bringing Adam Parrish to Cabeswater hadn't done anything. Even seeing Orphan Girl again hadn't done anything. Ronan still had no will, so Ronan still had no home and Ronan still had no mother. K's methods hadn't worked so far, but neither had Ronan's.

Gansey's answer was sharp and immediate.

"Joining the real world is better than any of that, Ronan."

He didn't understand. Ronan wasn't from the ordered world Gansey was familiar with; he was from a wilder world made real, and that was what he wanted to get back to. At least K's pills were mirror magic, letting him sneak back into Cabeswater as a thief, maybe someday letting him sneak back into the Barns. 

He couldn't inhabit either place naturally anymore. He'd lost them both.

"When I was a kid," he told Gansey now, "I'd close my eyes and go to sleep and drop into Cabeswater."

Gansey's hazel eyes narrowed, but Ronan read no disbelief in his face.

"I've been going there since I was born," he said. "I've been bringing stuff back, too."

"From your sleep?" Gansey asked. He had no trouble connecting the dots. He was open to wonder, Ronan realized. Ronan realized too that it had been too long since he'd met someone like that. K was like Declan; he knew magic was real, but that didn't stop him being a cynic about it. 

"What kinds of things?" Gansey asked. "Leaves? Nuts?"

"Nuts? Fuck off."

"It's a forest. What kinds of things did you take out of your sleep?"

"Out of my head," Ronan corrected. "Out of my dreams. And anything. Anything you'd want."

Gansey became academic, pedantic. "You don't mean anything-anything, though. You don't mean the whole world."

Ronan didn't know. He danced with uncertainty about his abilities. Niall had never taught him how else to think about this. But Ronan sensed that Gansey didn't really need an answer. This was not really an intellectual exercise for Gansey. After a second, his paper-thin academia slid off and left in its place someone wholly willing to give in to possibility. 

"Dream me something," he commanded. 

"I can't do it on the spot. Like I said, I need K's stuff now."

"Do you? You said you could do it when you were younger. What was different about you then?"

Ronan almost growled with fury. He'd had a home. He'd had Cabeswater. He'd had Niall and Aurora.

"Did you want it more?" Gansey asked now, as though he thought wanting equated with getting. 

"I could make it real," Ronan said. "I'd hold what I wanted like it was real, and take it out with no problems."

"There are problems?" Gansey asked. But he was overpower by curiosity and wonder. He switched the line of questioning, so that Ronan didn't have to explain about the night horrors. 

"Was it easier to make something real if you thought it was real?"

That seemed circular, but there was a dream logic in it. Ronan nodded. Gansey looked victorious. He reached into the pocket of his coveralls and drew out a battered piece of paper. It was covered in frantic scribbling, poorly-drawn diagrams. The cuneiform of the neurotic. 

"Adam wrote these instructions for me. This was my first night replacing an engine alone."

Ronan squinted at what was apparently an engine. Adam was a very bad artist. 

"Can you copy this?" Gansey asked. 

Ronan turned it over in his hands. Learning what was on it was both unnecessary and not enough. He thought he could copy it. Somehow the awful handwriting felt like Adam through and through, every crooked _g_ and crossed _t_ too hasty and exhausted. Ronan didn't have to learn the paper. He pocketed it. He knew Adam, so he could remake this without having to study it. 

"I can't do it right away. Like I said. I need K's stuff."

"Do you?" Gansey asked, sounding unconvinced. 

"Give me a couple nights," Ronan said. "I'll text you when I have it."

Gansey nodded. 

Ronan wasn't sure why he was agreeing to this. It had something to do with Gansy's belief. As though Gansey could command him fixed, and then he'd be fixed. 

He was still thinking of how to make that paper real when Gansey left him at the gates to the subdivision. He realized only later that he'd forgotten to tell Gansey that he and K were the ones draining the ley line. 

-

When Gansey's things had moved in -- his small houses and his nine-hundred dollar tweed coat, his boat shoes and his heroically battered monogrammed bag -- the tiny room above St. Agnes was left bursting at the seams.

Without Gansey's things there, Adam still would have struggled. He was taller than Gansey, and so the sloping ceilings gave him special trouble. The uneven floors seemed to target him as well. But with Gansey's things there, Adam wasn't just hitting himself around the apartment. He was also invariably crushing the police station or knocking into the public library. These seemed like special transgressions. After the first few days, Adam grew used so used to apologizing about it that he began to say sorry whenever he knocked his head or stubbed his toe, too tired to see what he'd crashed into now. Gansey soon moved the bed as far as it would go into one corner and began storing his things underneath it. He rearranged his model Henrietta across one low-ceilinged side, if only to give Adam a small path from the door to the fridge to the bed to the bathroom.

Adam's things were in cheap plastic bins under the sink and by the toilet. It was dramatically less space than even Adam had had before.

But for Gansey, this was still more space than the Camaro. Adam couldn't get used to the sound of the word thanks in that fine old Virginia voice. He asked Gansey to stop saying it. He didn't want thanks. He wanted Gansey here. After the first few days, the church staff had begun to question how two boys could live in such a small apartment with such a comparatively large single bed. Adam asked Boyd what they should do. Boyd had marched to the church office to give Gansey a glowing character reference. Adam was his most trusted employee, but Gansey was his favorite.

"Dick is a good boy. Religious boy," he'd told Mrs. Ramirez. "If he gets booted out of here, who knows where he'll end up?"

"Religious?" Mrs. Ramirez had asked.

"Some might say too religious," Boyd said darkly. Mrs. Ramirez had looked alarmed, so Adam had stiffly excused them at that point and thanked Boyd for all his help.

"Anything to keep him from having to go back there, son," Boyd said.

After that there was less muttering from the church staff. 

It was not terrible, living here. At times it was so exhilarating it didn't seem real. Living with Richard Campbell Gansey III, born to silver spoons and glittering cars and canapés. Living with his friend Gansey, anxious at night and bad at sleeping, piling books in every corner, with special segments of his heart carved out for Noah and Blue and Adam himself.

It wasn't terrible. It was remarkable. He had nothing to miss. His life had improved.

Missing made a fist around his heart and squeezed hard. There was no real reason for this. Adam couldn't remember the last time his parents had taken him anywhere, he couldn't remember the last time they'd spoken two words to him that weren't requests for their share of the paycheck. Adam hadn't even really been touched by his mother in years. When Blue Sargent had first pulled him in and held him long enough for Adam to realize that it was really happening, he'd nearly cried. So, rationally, he knew that things were better now. But on the rare nights when Gansey was asleep and he wasn't, Adam would clutch his knees and think of his mother and the trailer and miss all of it, even the fear.

There had been fear. It felt stupid to forget that. When he'd returned to pack his things he'd taken his father's gun. He didn't think his father would use it against his mother, but he didn't know he wouldn't either, and now the gun rested in the cereal box that had formerly held his spare change, stuffed behind a loose tile in the bathroom where Gansey wouldn't find it. He couldn't tell Gansey about it. Gansey's loss was profound, but it was clean and he was blameless in it. Mother, father, sister -- gone. Fortune -- gone. It was a storybook reversal, a bitter kick from fate. It had nothing to do with who Gansey really was.

With Adam, the damage ran so deep that objectively he knew it would be with him forever. He could kick himself for not getting out sooner the way Gansey had told him to, for not fighting back more, but that was useless. There had never been an Adam Parrish who hadn't been defined by that trailer. He hated himself for thinking there could be, that he could be like Gansey or even Blue. He wasn't. It wasn't just the missing that made him different, or the damage he would carry forever. It was how he only heard half of what was said now. It was the headaches and the sudden dizziness. It was how he hated the wild uncertainty of their vanishing forest, their sputtering ley line, Gansey's lost king.

Too much, too fast had happened to Adam. He'd thought that he could leave the trailer and not have it affect him, but he was out now, and he was bad at being out. 

But he was out. Adam had moved from the trailer to St. Agnes, and he couldn't stop at that. He would keep going, keep trying, working double-shifts, putting away for fall tuition. There was no way for Adam to move backwards. He did not have the luxury Gansey did: to stop and wait for a call from a lawyer, or for a crucial fact that would make Whelk somehow less dangerous. 

He didn't know how to make Gansey less cautious. Adam had never truly processed that Gansey could feel fear. But now he learned that Gansey rarely slept. Gansey's hands shook when he saw a stray magazine in the church office that had his mother's name on the cover. Gansey's paper Henrietta spoke not just of order and regimented control, but also unmistakable anxiety. Adam had felt almost relieved to discover that Gansey was affected too, but now the relief was giving way to another emotion entirely.

Fear was not just ill-suited to Richard Campbell Gansey III. Fear was ill-suited to the stupid and kind and marvelous boy Gansey was, Adam's friend. Adam hated to see him wear fear.

The second week, Adam came home at three in the morning. A party was winding down nearby, locals and flashy out-of-towners high on the road, causing a ribbon of highway mayhem, so Adam took a convoluted route through the backroads from the factory, and hoped against hope that Gansey would be asleep when he reached St. Agnes. Gansey wasn't. The small apartment was flooded with light. Gansey had no real sense of how high the electric bill could get, no matter how many times Adam explained it. He was sitting on the floor, in socks and nothing else, carefully gluing on the west wing of the Aglionby library. He started guiltily when Adam came in.

"Jesus," he said, looking and sounding apologetic. He dropped his glue and paper and put his hands over his crotch, too well-bred to not be mortified. "I'm sorry, I kept meaning to take a shower but the water wasn't heating. What a display."

He was broad in the shoulders and strong in the legs, more chiseled than any boy his age had a right to be. If this was a display, Adam thought it was the kind you usually kept in a European palace somewhere, private collection, too rich for his eyes. He wasn't sorry to see it.

Gansey got up now and vanished into the bathroom. His voice came through the door as he tested the water.

"Still cold. Are you going to sleep? I can lie down and be quiet."

Adam shook his head. He'd been exhausted three minutes ago, but now he wasn't, and he didn't like making Gansey lie quiet just for him. He got up and went into the bathroom. Gansey stood frowning at the taps, looking like he was about to call his lawyer and request that a demand letter be sent to the water company.

"I just want to wash my hair," he complained. "I think there's motor oil in it."

Adam was used to feeling dirty, to being dirty, but the unhappy tilt of Gansey's mouth extinguished any superiority he felt on that front. He hated coming back dirty from the garage too. He couldn't expect Gansey to bear it without complaint. So instead of saying anything, he tested the taps on the sink. They came in warm. Gansey passed a hand under the water and looked annoyed, then went back and tested the water from the shower again.

"Why on earth--"

"Sometimes it just works that way. Taps are fine. Shower isn't," Adam said, shrugging. "We can wash your hair now if you want." 

He went to shut off the shower, then pulled off his shirt so it wouldn't get wet, hanging it on the same nail that held Lynch's key. The key bumped against the wall, solid and comforting. Adam was hard now because Gansey was here and he was Adam's and he was _naked_ , but he thought he could tolerate it if it meant helping Gansey in this. He gestured at the sink and said, "Come on. Let me do it. That way we'll get all the motor oil out."

Gansey didn't hesitate. He bent over, giving Adam another spectacular view that Adam wasn't sure he deserved. He could have stared at it all night, but he was good at putting off the things he really wanted, so he turned away instead to get the bottle of cheap shampoo. He only used a bit. It lathered well enough and he massaged Gansey's scalp with it, working his way around his ears. Next to the vulnerable, beautiful skin of Gansey's neck, his fingers looked rough and ungainly. Adam ignored them and focused on getting Gansey's hair clean.

He didn't talk. At this hour, Adam's words were even more worn and hackneyed than usual, and he didn't feel anything that he thought was worth expressing. He was close enough to Gansey that the line of Gansey's body was warm against his. He spotted a strange cut on Gansey's arm that he washed now as well, not caring that this spattered water all over the floor.

"What is this?"

"Oh, that? I was trying to be more impressive than I should be, I think."

Adam frowned. That didn't sound like Gansey, but he wouldn't fight it. After this all Adam wanted was to rinse off his face, jerk off to make his hardness go away, and go to bed, hopefully with Gansey sleeping next to him instead of lying there plagued by insomnia. When he finished, he shut off the water and went to get a towel, then sat on the edge of the tub and dried Gansey's hair for him.

"My mother used to do this," Gansey said quietly.

Adam's never had. At least Adam was too tired for it to really hurt. 

"You going to try to sleep?" he asked. 

Gansey looked annoyed. "Well, I always try."

"What would help?" 

Gansey put his hands on Adam's and brought both hands and towel down to his shoulders. He locked eyes with Adam.

"You," he said, somehow very regal about it. "You help, Adam."

Adam shifted. He knew he could ask for sex now, but somehow he wasn't sure he wanted to. Blue had taken him aside after their fight and explained, a little bit uncomfortably, _I hope you know what I meant. I want to be your friend too, not -- not a thing you have._

Adam was so bad at telling the difference.

"Let me take care of this," he said, gesturing at his pants. "Then I'll hold you." 

Gansey rubbed his thumb against his lip. He brought Adam's hands to Adam's lap, then straightened. His cock bobbed up, half-hard already.

"Adam," he said again, very reasonable and controlled.

They moved together to undo Adam's pants, pull them off, pull off Adam's underwear. Once Adam was naked it became clear that Gansey still had his socks on, so they switched places and then Gansey was sitting on the rim of the tub, pulling those off as well. When he was done he stood and Adam rubbed his fingers along the vee leading down past Gansey's abdomen, inhaling hard. Gansey took his dick in hand and briefly, playfully, touched the tip to the tip of Adam's dick. Twice.

"Knock, knock."

Adam couldn't help it. He started laughing. Gansey looked terribly pleased with himself and began to lead them back to the bed, then changed his mind.

"Hang on. We haven't got enough clean sheets to replace a wet spot. Let's do it here, I guess."

He regarded the toilet with an unimpressed flick of his lashes but eventually sat on it. Adam moved to straddle him, but he splayed one warm hand on Adam's stomach and said, very seriously, "I could eat you again."

Just the thought was electrifying, the memory of Gansey's searching tongue, the way Gansey seemed to like doing that, and to _Adam_. But Adam had to be the voice of reason. Gansey hadn't slept well for two nights now and he had Nino's in the morning, and Adam knew too well what it was like to work when you were exhausted. He shook his head and came close to Gansey now, fitting them together, lining their dicks up. Gansey's hand came up and stroked both as he rolled his hips. Then his hand settled on Adam, exploring his foreskin. 

"Can I--does it hurt if I pull it back?"

Adam shook his head. He wound his arms around Gansey and then changed his mind, pulling Gansey's damp hair back gently so that he could look at him, at his even and handsome face, high cheekbones and glorious mouth. Adam was quiet on the outside, gasping and moving in time to Gansey, but on the inside he was filled with wondrous unquiet.

They came quickly and clumsily, awkward at this angle. It would have been better on the bed, and Adam resolved to do laundry as soon as possible. Gansey took a corner of the towel and wet it with warm water from the sink, then cleaned them off like this. When they were in bed he turned to Adam expectantly, demanding, and Adam wrapped his arms around him. Gansey was solid and so warm, but wound tighter than a boy like Gansey should be. Adam ran his fingers along his back until he couldn't anymore. He was too heavy and tired, and he was thinking for once not of his mother or the trailer or his ruined ear but of what he knew he'd wake up to. Gansey tan against the sheets, the curve of his arms, the tilt of his mouth, the peek of his flaccid penis so close to Adam. 

Adam had nearly dozed off into this dream when Gansey said, "We should talk about Ronan. I meant to tell you that. Are you asleep? I can tell you tomorrow."

Adam bit back a groan. Gansey was talkative at night, and Adam really wasn't. He managed to nod his head a bit.

"I can't tell you the specifics because it isn't my secret to tell, but I think it's fair to say he knows more about magic than he lets on about."

Adam opened his eyes for the express purpose of rolling them. Ronan had led them to Cabeswater. Ronan had known Noah longer than they had, and had always known what Noah was. Ronan seemed half-alive in the world some days, but Adam was beginning to think that this was only because half of his life was lived in the wild darkness of that forest, a place he took to like he knew it intimately. 

"I hope he tells us what he knows," Gansey continued. "I'm supposed to meet him later this week. I'll ask him if I can bring you and Jane."

Adam hoped he would. He wasn't so close to sleep that the many bitter, jealous parts of him couldn't jerk awake at the thought of Gansey alone with Ronan Lynch, feral and dark and attractive enough to rattle the stars.

"This goes back a long time with him, to his childhood. Magic."

Adam slowly nodded again. Magic fit Ronan Lynch. He seemed to live in the moments before a ghost appeared, a tree spoke, a bar fight began.

After this Gansey was quiet, but before Adam could really fall asleep something occurred to him, only hazily connected but maybe relevant. The words battled their way out, his lips heavy, his tongue fuzzy with sleep.

"His dad was murdered."

Everybody knew that. Or at least Adam did. Adam didn't try to listen for facts about Ronan Lynch, but once he had them he always seemed to retain them.

"His dad," Adam clarified, "was beaten to death in the driveway of their mansion or something, and he found the body. And after that, you know. Kavinsky. He became friends with Kavinsky."

"Jesus," Gansey said. His arms tightened around Adam. Adam didn't want to fight it, the touch so complete and intimate that for once he didn't have to think about everything else he wanted. 

He fell asleep.

-

Because Blue could fix cars now, Calla lured her out to her out to the curb one morning, with promises of a dying Ford. Then, when Blue had pulled open the hood and prepared to show off what she knew, very pleased with herself, Calla took one of her elbows and Persephone took another.

"Excuse me," Blue said, annoyed. "I can't check the battery if you're doing that."

"We don't need to check the battery, but somebody should put the hood down," Persephone said, looking up at the sky. Her sigh conveyed that she felt the hood was an unsolvable dilemma. 

Calla put the hood down. 

Persephone made large, round motions with the arm that wasn't holding Blue's elbows. They were vaguely directional. By this Blue deduced that she was to get in the car.

"Get in the car, Blue," Calla said. 

Blue got in the car, but she was annoyed about the tactics they were using to get her in.

"You couldn't have just asked?" she demanded.

"Not there," Calla said, because Blue was in the back seat. "At the wheel. Maura thinks we're preparing you for your drivers' test."

Things became a little clearer. 

"Why don't you want her to know?" Blue asked, curiosity overpowering her annoyance. 

Calla got into the front passenger seat and Persephone got in the back. They directed her to start the car and pull away from the curb, Calla more clearly than Persephone. Calla didn't answer Blue's question until they'd turned off of Fox Way and onto Raleigh Drive.

"We saw something. It concerns Maura. We're worried about her."

Persephone's small voice intruded.

"She isn't going to be thinking clearly. We saw it when we scryed."

"She's going to lose her mind," Calla said.

It seemed so unlikely that Blue didn't bother to take it seriously. Also, it was hard for her to take anything seriously when she was behind the wheel of the Ford because the seriousness of being behind the wheel dwarfed everything else. Blue was not a large person, and being in charge of a car reminded her of that. The Ford was too big, too likely to cause major damage if she did anything wrong. She drove very slowly and carefully, stopping at the end of every block.

"Okay," Calla said. "I'm driving now."

Blue pulled over, still very carefully, and was yelled at for trying to get parallel the way she was supposed to. When she was in the passenger seat she could breathe easier. Calla was a far more reckless driver than Blue was, so she wasn't actually _safer_. But at least any vehicular manslaughter wouldn't be her fault. Everyone told her that her ability to take responsibility seriously was a good trait, but Blue preferred to not exercise that trait if she didn't have to.

Now that she was breathing easier, what they said about Maura still didn't make any sense.

"Why were you scrying about her?" 

"We weren't," Persephone said. 

"We were scrying about you," said Calla.

"Me?"

In response, Calla reached over and opened the glove compartment, a dangerous maneuver because she was also trying to get onto the highway. The car swerved and Blue ended up with a lapful of pamphlets. Each one had a worried-looking boy in a tie on the front. They had sections on things like SEXUALLY TRANSMITTED INFECTIONS TO DISCUSS WITH YOUR GIRLFRIEND. And HOW TO PUT A CONDOM ON YOUR PENIS.

Blue didn't know what to be insulted over: the fact that Calla had handed her these, or the fact that they assumed a male reader.

"These are for boys!"

"Of course they are. They're from the Aglionby infirmary," Calla said, rolling her eyes.

"You got me Aglionby sex pamphlets?" Blue screeched.

"They're not for you. They're for Richie Rich and Coca-Cola," Calla said.

Persephone spoke up. "Calla was also going to threaten them." 

"I sure am," Calla said, looking as charmed as she could look by the very idea. 

Blue's irritation deepened, because she was very sure that if she'd been born a boy then no one would be threatening her significant others on her behalf. But she didn't have any 300 Fox Way boys to compare experiences with, so naturally she couldn't prove this. It was also entirely possible that Calla just wanted to threaten people.

"I still don't know why you were scrying about me."

"I didn't think it was a good idea," Persephone sighed.

"I did," Calla said. "You used to be so sensible."

Blue had always suspected that to some people, _sensible_ was code for _doesn't have a boyfriend._ She was annoyed to discover that Calla was one of these people.

They were now following the blue line of the mountains, turning towards the small ones with names that even Blue didn't know, though she'd lived in the area all her life. Shabby, comfortable farmhouses dotted these parts, ringed by gravel drives and populated mostly by shaggy kinds of dogs.

"Why do you think she's going to go crazy?" Blue asked now.

"Not crazy--" Persephone began.

"We saw it," Calla said.

Persephone said, "--she's just going to try to get herself trapped in a cave--"

"In a _cave_?" 

"Well, aren't you glad now that we decided to scry in the direction of your future," Calla said tartly.

"Yes, but you were looking for teen pregnancies!" Blue said. Her voice was rising and she wasn't sure why. The thought of Maura giving herself up to spelunking still felt deeply unlikely. "You didn't see mom walk into a _cave_?"

"We saw her planning it," Persephone said now. "Or writing a note about it. Or at least thinking it." She ran her fingers sadly over the Ford's worn seat covers. "It's not precise. But the idea was there."

"It has to do with Butternut," Calla said. Her face was surly.

"Butternut?" Blue said.

Calla looked at Persephone in the rearview. Persephone looked at her fingers in her lap.

"Your father," Calla said, in a way that conveyed she was ripping off a bandage.

"My father: Butternut?" 

This day was absolutely full of disappointments.

But along the way to wherever it was Calla planned on taking them, Blue got them to explain better. Or she got Calla to explain better. Persephone didn't really do explanations.

"She's been reading and scrying for that sleeper they told her about at the task force," Calla reported. "We all know what it is: something left there to make a trap, so we didn't think asking the cards about it would lead her to go looking for it. But apparently it's a thought she's considered. That much was clear from the scrying."

"She would never do that," Blue protested. 

But the longer the thought floated between them, the likelier it felt. Maura was many things but she wasn't exactly predictable.

Calla pulled over near a wood frame house that sagged at every corner. She parked just far away enough that they might have been pausing to stretch their legs, but somehow Blue knew they were here for that house, though what Calla thought they would find inside it, Blue didn't know. It was surrounded by rusted tires and sofas gouged by weeds. As soon as she saw it, Blue desperately wanted to introduce it to the concept of order.

"Here's our sleeper," Calla said.

"How do you know?" Blue said.

"We followed the line until we knew this was the place."

Blue stared from Calla to Persephone. Neither was looking at her. Blue had no idea that they'd known where the exact path of the line was, and said so. She felt somewhat miffed on Gansey's behalf. He'd tracked it and worked for it for so long, and all this time Calla and Persephone could have just told him.

Calla flicked a stray hair out of Blue's face and said, "Richie Rich likes the search, so don't even start. Anyway, he told us. Kind of."

"We read the path of the line in his journal, and then we asked the cards about it," Persephone said.

"When did you get your hands on his journal?" Blue asked, aghast. Somehow that felt like trespassing. Gansey rarely let the journal out of his sight these days, though maybe they'd asked and he'd shown it to them. Gansey was not by nature secretive.

But silence reigned inside the Ford, the kind of silence that had teeth.

"No," Blue said, as realization hit. "You snuck down to look at his journal while we had _sex_?"

"He was busy," Calla said. "You were busy. No one was using that journal at that moment."

"We also left some free condoms in his duffel bag," Persephone said placidly.

"It's no worse than what we did with Orla's first boyfriend," Calla pointed out.

"I am not Orla," Blue said, trying to grab for whatever dignity she could. She was upset with herself now for feeling like she had less dignity; rationally, she knew she shouldn't feel that way at all, and neither Calla nor Persephone seemed especially judgmental. Just annoyingly well-informed.

"Are we going to try and find this sleeper?" she demanded, mostly to change the subject.

"We are," Calla said. "You're going to distract the owner of Dittley's farm."

This was the sagging house and the field of stray cats and broken air conditioners. Calla and Persephone took a circuitous route around the front edges of the property, wanderers in a maze of dying sofas and milk jugs attacked by weeds. Blue was left looking at the flaked-paint door, waiting for it to answer her knock. It took its time about it. In the meantime, she stared around at the porch. Cats and gouged holes in the floorboards stared back, everything decrepit.

The man who answered the door did not look decrepit, but then he was nearly seven feet tall and so his height eclipsed all other characteristics. He caught Blue looking at his porch and said, "IT'S GLOOMY ALRIGHT. DON'T TRY TO TELL ME IT'S NOT," less like the gloom bothered him and more like he had little time to spare for platitudes. He added, "WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU?"

Somewhere in the booms and reverberations of his voice, there was genuine curiosity. Blue decided that he wasn't angry. Just large.

"Yard-cleaning service," she told him. She dug around in her pockets. She thought she had some handmade business cards somewhere. 

"THERE'S A LOT OF YARD AND NOT A LOT OF YOU."

"I'm very fast," Blue said. "Have you ever seen those nature specials on horseflies? They're smaller than you and me, but some of the fastest creatures on earth."

"I DON'T LIKE THOSE," the man informed her. "BLOOD-SUCKING. I LIKE THE ONES THEY DO ON THEM ANTS IN AFRICA OR INDIA OR SOMEWHERE."

Blue shrugged. She hadn't seen those. She found a business card and handed it over and the man squinted at it, flimsy in his large fingers. 

"YOU'D BETTER COME ON IN, THEN. I'M JESSE."

She found herself in a house as tattered and junk-strewn as the yard was. Something about the name Jesse Dittley bothered her, like it was a name she should know. She wasn't entirely sure she should have come in, but she didn't feel unsafe. Or at least nothing about Jesse felt unsafe, apart from his size. It was the ruined, sideways tilt to the house that seemed wrong, like it should house a witch instead of a man in the largest wifebeater she'd ever seen. 

He brought her some Sunny-D in a glass jar as large as her forearm. The jar was clean, so Blue accepted it.

"WHAT'S YOUR RATE?"

"Wha--oh," Blue said, because she'd locked eyes with something in the corner that was either a cat or a very dirty blanket. "It's negotiable. I'd have to survey the landscape, pro-rate the level of work, calculate installations if you want them."

She wasn't sure what she was saying, but she didn't think Jesse would know either, and she suspected she could talk about pro-rating installations for a good long while, whatever it actually meant. It would be channeling Gansey at his most presidential: big words, enthusiasm, a certain tidy confidence.

"I THINK WE BOTH KNOW YOU COULD SAY THAT EASIER," Jesse Dittley said.

Blue shrugged. She decided that she liked it better that that kind of thing didn't fool him.

"Depends on how bad your yard is," she said.

Jesse squinted down at her.

"DID THEM MCGUIRES DOWN THE ROAD SEND YOU? THEY'RE ALWAYS COMPLAINING ABOUT THE HOUSE AND THE YARD."

"I like to think that every house and yard could use improvement," Blue told him. "That kind of thinking comes with the job, really."

"NOTHING'S GOING TO FIX THIS HOUSE," Jesse said matter-of-factly. "IT'S A CURSED HOUSE."

Blue stared at him. Somewhere among the heaps of mismatched furniture and old planters a cat yowled dramatically. Jesse nodded at the yowl, satisfied. See? Cursed.

"What kind of curse?"

Now Jesse settled in his chair. He was pleased to talk about this. 

"DITTLEY CURSE. KILLS EVERY MALE DITTLEY GOING BACK, OH, TO MY DADDY'S DADDY'S DADDY'S DADDY. EVER SINCE A DITTLEY GOT ON THE LAND."

"Did it kill people before there were Dittleys?"

Jesse looked perturbed. 

"HOPE NOT," he said, both like he didn't like to think of people dying and like he didn't like to think of the curse betraying the Dittleys like that.

"ANYWAY IT KILLS THE CATS TOO, SOMETIMES, BUT ONLY THE ONES THE WOMENFOLK LIKE," Jesse continued, with what seemed like wonderfully enthused inaccuracy. "AND IT MAKES THE WALLS BLEED. AND IT MIGHT HAVE HANGED MY GRANDFATHER'S MAMA UP ON SOME TREES IN TOWN. OF COURSE, SHE WAS A CRIMINAL, SO THE PERSON WHO DID IT WAS THE SHERIFF, BUT I LIKE TO THINK IT WAS THE CURSE ACTING ON HIM."

He lapsed into puzzling over this. Blue let him, and took a sip of her Sunny-D. She'd found that once you got people on the one thing they really wanted to talk about, they were more or less sufficiently distracted from anything else. Of course, she wanted to talk about this too. She'd never met anybody else with a curse before. She said as much.

Jesse squinted at her again, like he was trying to see if she was playing him. Blue relayed the particulars of her curse, plain about them so that he would see that she wasn't, and he nodded as if to say _that's a good one._

"Mine's just in me, I think," Blue said. "Is your curse tied to the house?"

"OH, NO," Jesse said. "I'VE GOT A CAVE, TOO. A HOUSE AND A FARM AND A YARD AND A CAVE. CURSE IS IN THE CAVE. IT'S A TRAP, THOUGH. DOESN'T STOP AT THE CAVE EVEN THOUGH IT'S IN THERE."

His last few sentences didn't quite make sense, but Blue didn't need them to. She was thinking back to another few sentences that hadn't quite made sense to her when she'd heard them today.

_She's been reading and scrying for that sleeper they told her about. We all know what it is: something left there to make a trap._

"Can I see the cave?" she asked abruptly, dread rising in her throat. She thought of Calla and Persephone walking into a trap, and found that she didn't like the idea.

"ALRIGHT," Jesse said. "ONLY FAIR IF YOU'RE GONNA WORK NEAR IT."

He rose and she followed after him, through the back door and a misty cow pasture, then along a barbed-wire fence. He led her to a ruined stone structure, its purpose mysterious, its height reduced to a single crumbling story. Its tiny diamond windows seemed wrong for the area. Calla and Persephone were nowhere to be found.

"What happens if you go inside?" Blue asked nervously.

"ONLY KILLS DITTLEYS," Jesse said. "AND IT DOESN'T TAKE US UNTIL IT'S READY. MIGHT GET INJURED IF YOU GO IN, THOUGH. IT'S STEEP IN THERE."

Panicked though she was, Blue still felt that this was inconsistent. "You've been in there even though you know it's going to kill you?"

"TO GET MY DADDY'S BONES," Jesse said, like this was only obvious.

Still no sight of Calla and Persephone.

"Can I go in?"

"NO," Jesse said. "COULDN'T IN GOOD CONSCIENCE LET YOU GO IN. I LIKE THE LOOKS OF YOU. I DON'T WANT ANY TINY PEOPLE HURT ON MY LAND, EITHER."

"But large people are fine?" Blue snapped. She didn't actually want to go into his ruined cave-tower, but she would. She wasn't leaving without Calla and Persephone.

Jesse shrugged. "DITTLEYS ARE ALL BIG AND WE'VE BEEN DYING HERE FOR A WHILE YET. IF YOU WANT TO GO BACK TO YOUR CAR YOUR FRIENDS WILL BE WAITING. RECKON THEY LEFT WHEN WE WERE WALKING OUT HERE. SHORT WAY'S ACROSS THE FIELD. HAVE A GOOD DAY NOW." 

Blue looked up at him, shocked. He gently pushed her back away from the tower and then started towards the house. Midway there he turned and said, "YOU WEREN'T SERIOUS ABOUT CLEANING THE YARD, WERE YOU?"

"Of course I was!" Blue said, stung. 

She hadn't been, but _now_ she was.

But when she got back to the car Calla and Persephone were muttering together, and Calla said, "Blue, you're not to come back here again alone, you understand?"

Blue nodded. She knew what they meant: stay away from this place unless we tell you otherwise. But what she chose to hear was: wouldn't Gansey and Adam like to know about another spot on the ley line?

And she really did run her own yard-cleaning service. It would be bad business practices not to follow up, at least.


	9. Chapter 9

Gansey texted Ronan twice: first to ask if he could bring Blue and Adam along, then to ask if there was anything he could do to make the dreaming easier.

Ronan only saw the texts hours after Gansey sent them, so the conversation sputtered. Ronan wasn't sure how people were supposed to help you with dreaming, barring K's version of help. 

He agreed to meet them in the field by Cabeswater, just before the final knoll that brought the forest into view. They were well into June now, and field crickets and grass spiders had colonized the outdoors, harbingers of the overpowering heat yet to come. But here nothing stirred, not even the trees. Ronan didn't like that. He'd been rationing his dreaming, trying to drain the forest less, but he couldn't account for K. So he had no idea what would happen when they crossed that last stretch, whether he'd see the forest or not. A part of him didn't want to look.

In his pockets, he had the original paper and a perfect copy. In the trunk of the BMW, he had a dead night horror. 

He hadn't used the pills. He hadn't wanted to. He knew what he wanted: Adam scribbling before he left for work, hasty, his hands curled awkwardly around his pen the same way they always were in Latin class. Adam always wrote at breakneck speed, like he thought his writing would count for less than other people's and so he had to make it up in sore fingers and volume. When Ronan dreamed a copy of his handiwork, he wasn't just dreaming the paper. He was capturing that, the truth of the thing. 

K's pills weren't good at that. You didn't have to think in specifics when you took them; that was the point. You lost hours in the waking world, but in Cabeswater you were in and out, and it wasn't the truth you were looking for but the thrill of making the forest give you a simulacrum, fast. Too fast for the horrors to catch.

This time, Ronan had been slow about it. He was unused to this. He half-hated it. He'd failed over and over and over, not sure he could do it at all and then -- succeeded. 

And now he had a dead night horror to bury. 

No one had any business looking in his trunk, so it didn't matter. He waited behind the wheel, watching the mirror for any signs of the others. Soon enough Gansey's beloved car appeared, roaring over the grass. Gansey had sprung for a wash, possibly as an apology to the car for moving into a real apartment. The Camaro now looked brighter and even more garish than before, if that was possible. It skidded diagonally into place beside the BMW with a growl, two animal gods in danger of greeting each other fender to fender. Blue Sargent's arm, wearing something that was 90% bottle-caps, hung out of the passenger-side. Adam got out from the back, shaking his head as if he disapproved of this joyous danger.

Gansey was all controlled smiles.

"How are you?" he shouted from the drivers' seat of the Camaro.

Ronan didn't answer. He climbed out of the BMW and held out the papers. Blue was the one to take them, confident that neither Gansey nor Adam would mind. Neither Adam nor Gansey minded. Ronan glared down at her as she spread the papers across the hood of Gansey's car.

"What is this?"

"You did it!" Gansey said, exuberance outpacing his hearing. Then he processed Blue's question and said, "Oh, I asked him to make a copy."

"You asked him to make a copy of that?" Adam asked. He looked unimpressed.

"Not just make a copy," Gansey said, running a hand through his hair. "Maybe Ronan can explain better."

Now three pairs of eyes were on Ronan. Gansey must not have explained about the dreaming power. Gansey wouldn't spill secrets; perfidy didn't fit the boy in front of Ronan.

Ronan had to fight with the explanation to get it out a second time. When he'd echoed the same words he'd told Gansey at Nino's the other night, Adam said, "You're saying that you made a copy by pulling it out of your dreams?"

Ronan heard none of his Henrietta accent in the words. This was an Adam with the Henrietta filed off, the Adam at the front of the classroom trying to outpace every boy there who didn't have a tear in his sweater. Ronan understood what this meant. Adam didn't believe him. It didn't matter that Gansey did, that Blue Sargent looked like she might. Adam didn't.

"Tell me how else I made it, then."

"With a photocopier," Adam said. "With a really expensive printer. I don't know, but I could find out."

There was a stubborn line on his forehead, notching his face with disbelief. Gansey looked sideways at him and said, "Parrish, you're not being fair--"

"The simplest explanation isn't that he dreamed it, Gansey."

He colored Gansey's names in familiar tones. Adam wasn't just disbelieving. He was jealous. Ronan, himself a jealous being, recognized the symptoms. 

It was the most impersonal of personal emotions. It wasn't anything Ronan was, or even anything Ronan was claiming to be. It was that Gansey believed Ronan without blinking, so naturally Adam wouldn't. Ronan moved to snatch up the papers but Adam grabbed one first. Ronan couldn't tell if it was the copy or the original.

Gansey put himself between them, firm and displeased, and said, "There's no call to--"

Ronan spoke over him.

"Give it, poor boy."

"Dream something right now," Adam said. "If you really have dreaming powers, then show them to us."

"It doesn't work like that."

Dreaming came with horrors. Or it was supposed to, anyway. He didn't want to risk bringing another one back. He reached for pills stashed in the glove compartment of the BMW. He hardly heard what Gansey was saying to Adam, or how Adam was arguing in response. He emerged from the car with a ziploc bag bulging with K's wonder drugs.

He said. "This time I make whatever the fuck I want."

Gansey frowned at the pills. Blue said, hesitantly, "Should we do it in Cabeswater?"

Ronan's no was immediate, and so was Adam's yes. In this, too, they argued briefly, but Adam won out. It wasn't a real victory; Ronan just realized that the missing forest was starting to become another kind of lie. He slammed the BMW door closed and started across the knoll.

Cabeswater was there. And maybe it was Ronan's imagination that it looked less vivid than it should. He'd been careful about his dreams. He hadn't stolen any of power lately even if K probably had. He strode into the forest until he found the trees that were so massive they grew together into great castles. He sat in the bend of one of these and opened the ziploc bag, then extracted a pill. He didn't have anything to take it with so he downed it dry. Before he smashed into sleep he saw the others hurrying to catch up with him.

"This is what drains the line," he called out to Gansey. 

Something like apprehension, but worse, shattered onto Gansey's face.

Then Ronan fell.

From Cabeswater into Cabeswater. Ronan had never actually dreamed while physically inside the forest before. He knew when he opened his eyes in the dream that this was different. Something was wrong. Now everything was too vivid. It felt like there was a steady heartbeat on the other side of the tree. When Ronan followed the sound he saw Orphan Girl crouched between the roots, holding her knees.

"Listen, Ronan," she said.

But Ronan heard the rattle of them. Claws clacking, _tck-tck-tck-tck-tck_.

This couldn't be happening. He'd taken the pills. He was supposed to go in-out, like a thief. But the forest around him was too solid to steal from, so real and permanent that he knew he couldn't just command himself to take and then wake up. Nothing here had any give. It was all true as waking, real as life. This made the presence of the night horrors worse. They were savage conglomerations of beaks and wings and greasy scales, inherently unreal in some way Ronan couldn't quantify.

Ronan was running before he could think.

"Ronan!" Orphan Girl called. 'They're no different! They're no different from the other things!"

But the night horrors _were_ different. They weren't like Ronan's dream-boxes and cloaks, they weren't like his mother. They were symptoms of Ronan himself gone wrong. He could hear them scratch and slither around him, just beyond the trees, as he tripped over roots and dodged branches. At the pond, he dove to the left before one was on him and turned over his shoulder to see it swoop, carried by momentum but strangely graceful as it arced to avoid the water. It swiveled, beak clacking, so that it was waiting for him on the other side. In the bank of trees next to him there was another chorus of clacks.

There was one place they wouldn't go. It loomed in front of Ronan, the Dreaming Tree, gouging the landscape of Ronan's mind. Ronan had had enough encounters with the horrors to know they avoided it scrupulously. 

The horrors dove. Ronan dove, too. The rotten opening swallowed him whole; inside, he found the place he'd always known he would find.

The road.

It wasn't a road he could see, but a dream-road, which meant that he understood it was there without ever having to perceive it with his senses. He knew at once that it was an old road, and a long one.

 _I saw that old road again,_ Niall had said once over breakfast. _But when God made me the earth cracked open and all the roads fractured, including this one. So they can't make me walk it. I'm not one for roads. I like the wild places._

Ronan thought this was a wild place. The road was a vein cut into the world, throbbing in a silent dare.

_Walk._

_Walk._

_Walk._

Ronan didn't want to see what lay on the other side of it. No one did. This was the thing people only looked at sideways, falsely casual about it, terribly afraid. This led to all the secrets that would be there at the end of the world. Ronan didn't really want to walk it. Ronan had promised he wouldn't.

He took a step. Then another. It wasn't compulsion. That would suggest that he fought, and he didn't. This was natural. His mind was banked as a sleepwalker's, and though he knew instinctively that he didn't want to do this, he also understood that the road was here to be walked. If he hadn't wanted to walk it, then he never should have entered the tree in the first place. The Dreaming Tree only showed you endings, and if you let it it could make those endings inevitable. 

So Ronan kept walking, letting the blank ribbon of the road unspool. 

Something grabbed his ankle.

The fear was immediate and so was the fury. He almost heard the clacks again, so complete was his horror. The road coalesced into a place that had real form, dirt and then cobbles and then tar, like it couldn't decide on an era. The era didn't matter. What had been perfect and unmarred was now clotted with a great pit, a fracture, just like his father had promised. Someone was trapped in this murky pothole. They were unrecognizable until Ronan tried to kick them off and saw that the white arm didn't bruise. The dirty fingernails remained clamped around his leg, secure as a horror's claws.

It was Noah. He was curled in the pit, his eyes sightless, his form sloughing away. It didn't fade. It rotted, the way the Dreaming Tree did, in the way of living things that had become poisonous to the touch. Noah's bones had been very clean when Ronan had found them, and now he wondered if this was because the flesh was here, eaten apart by irregular holes of nothing. 

"Hey," Ronan said. "Piss up a rope, asshole. That's my leg."

He wanted to hear Noah's soundless, halfway-there laughs. Noah was one hundred percent dead but one hundred percent boy, too, unchangingly delighted whenever Ronan made the stupidest jokes. But this Noah didn't laugh. His eyes were being eaten from the inside by black holes. Ronan crouched next to the pit and shook him furiously, trying to get him to wake. Noah made the rattling, hoarse sound of the night horrors, like he was nothing but a bag of rot.

Touching him made Ronan despair. It was the sort of despair Ronan's mind never wanted to touch: the wondering if his father would come home, the fear of the night horrors. The confused and wordless terror he'd felt when he'd first learned that there was a world beyond the Barns. 

Then, his mother had taken him in her arms and sung to him to calm him. Ronan knew the song. All the Lynch boys knew it. It was not a collection of words. It was the sensation of Aurora, comfortable and warm. Ronan's right hand closed on it and he held it like it was real until it was. It turned out to be a shell-shaped song, pearly-white and warm, coiling back in on itself until it reached an inner point that felt like home. Ronan held the open end of the shell to Noah's ear so that Noah would hear it. After a minute, Noah's hand slackened. It fell away of its own accord, back into the shallow pit. Ronan ignored the overpowering dare of the road and sat next to Noah, keeping the shell close so that Noah could have its humming comfort.

This was what he should have shown the others. This very deep part of him, a part he'd nearly forgotten. A part that was always terrifying to bring out of his dreams, so soft and glowing. The shell reminded him of Chainsaw, not in shape or function but in what it really was. Ronan's feelings all had this glow, this soft-bodied element. It made Ronan look at his heart and think: _rough it up. Let's rough it up._ He didn't want to lay these stupid parts of him bare. It didn't feel right. When Ronan had been born, the rivers had dried up and the cattle had wept blood. Ronan was a war, a weapon. He wasn't supposed to be this pitiful and translucent.

But this Noah both embodied terror and -- Ronan knew -- felt it. If there was anything in Noah left to properly feel and not simply echo, then it was here in this pit, and it was scared. So Ronan touched the song to its rotting ear and prayed that the holes would begin to fill in. Slowly, slowly, some did. They didn't fill with Noah. What was gone was gone. They filled with something new: the soft glow of the song. 

But something reached into Ronan and it jarred. There was only one direction on the road: forward, but Ronan was directionless, unable to move beyond where he was pulled. He held tight to his mother's song, furiously trying to keep it with Noah, furious about not showing it to Adam Parrish, wanting to make it real for every last one of these people. He still held it like it _was_ real.

It wasn't enough. When he woke, Adam was above him, Blue Sargent to his left, and to his right their worried reflections in the lens of Gansey's glasses. 

"Ronan," Adam was saying, shaking him hard. He kept saying Ronan's name in tones saturated with Henrietta.

Ronan's hands were empty. He'd failed. He'd brought nothing back and Noah was still out there on the road. 

"Your heart stopped," Adam told him wildly. "I swear to god. I didn't feel it beating."

Gansey was holding the bag of pills like it was a basin of unmentionable fluids, something dirty that he wanted to get rid of as quickly as possible. But it was Adam who took it and, with one violent gesture, flung it so that the pills scattered among the roots, camouflaged among the moss. Then he held out the paper he'd taken from Ronan.

"Here," he said uncomfortably. "It's fine. I'm sorry, Ronan. Okay? You didn't have to do this."

"You shouldn't do it," Gansey began firmly, but he didn't get the chance to say anything else. When Adam pressed the paper into Ronan's hands, it crumpled and crackled with sound. They stared at it. Ronan took it and gently smoothed it out against his thigh. Aurora's voice startled the branches around them. Jealous birds chirped and shot away from the clearing, furious at being upstaged.

The paper was singing.

Richard Campbell Gansey III didn't belong in the same sentence as a phrase like _lost his shit_ , but it was fair to say that Gansey lost his shit. Ronan blinked at him. There was joy written on his face now. Ronan was a marvelous creature. Ronan was something exceptional. Ronan was remarkable beyond belief, which was really saying something, because Gansey's belief was like that road: there was nothing beyond it. It came up against no limits.

Ronan felt his mouth drop into a scowl, but aside from that he had nothing to say. He'd brought the song out. But he'd lodged it in something else. He'd made it real, but he'd made it real by giving it to Adam, fixing it to the thing Adam held.

He'd never done this before. He wasn't sure how it had happened. Ronan had claimed that he could make anything, but this came closer to changing anything, doing anything. Ronan felt lightheaded. 

_What_ am _I?_

Adam was still apologizing, fair features cloudy with misery. Ronan hated that. He looked away. Then a very short shadow fell over him and waved its arms at both Adam and Gansey.

"I think you should give him some space," Blue said, sounding irritated. She flopped next to Ronan again and looked at him expectantly, like she thought he would say something. Instead, he picked at the black bands on his arms. Eventually Gansey got tired of waiting.

"This is remarkable. Think about what you could make--"

"It doesn't help us," Adam cut in. "Not if that's what it does to him. Sure, he can make anything, but--"

"Steal," Ronan said.

He could manage that word. He fixated on it; the confession he should have given Gansey days ago.

"I used to be able to make," he said. "Now I can only steal. That's why it drains the line and Cabeswater. K and me -- we're stealing from it."

"He can do it?" Blue said. Something about the way she said it exposed this as a world-shattering unfairness. 

Gansey said, "I refuse to believe that you can only do this if you steal." 

There went his great boundless belief. It stopped as soon as Gansey refused to indulge it. Ronan became frustrated.

"I'm glad you're an expert on my fucking powers, Dick."

Gansey pushed his glasses up, the gesture curt, an acknowledgement that somehow didn't give an inch.

"You didn't steal when you were young. You need to take those pills to steal, and look what they do to you."

"You know, I had absolutely no idea they were a bad thing until you told me right now," Ronan said. "Just this second."

Adam said, "How is stealing different? And what did you steal to make this?"

He touched his fingers briefly to the paper on Ronan's thigh, and Ronan half-imagined that it burned. Adam was a few layers from the skin. Ronan didn't know whether he wanted to stay Adam's wrist or throw a punch.

"Maybe we should stop acting like he needs to prove anything or dream the way we want him to," Blue said now, rolling her eyes. "He can't solve all our problems anyway. Whelk is out there, Noah's gone, and maybe Ronan will stop draining the line but Kavinsky definitely won't."

Ronan nodded. He would, but K wouldn't.

"We should ask your mom and Calla and Persephone," Adam said. "They're psychic, right? Persephone told us the line was being drained, and now we know why. And the ley line -- it's energy. And your family knows that. They deal with that. It's a match. We should see what else they know."

Blue looked annoyed by the implication that her family knew more that they hadn't told her, but nodded. Gansey nodded thoughtfully as well.

"We can do it after work today," he said. "Ronan?"

He packed a lot into Ronan's name. Ronan, are you coming? Ronan, are you going back to Kavinsky? Ronan, are you taking those pills? Ronan, are you stealing again? But Ronan edged back from the precipice here. He still had no idea what he'd done to bring the song out and use it to change the paper. He still had the image of Noah in that pit. He still had a night horror in his trunk. He stood. The singing paper fluttered to the ground, cascading notes after it. Adam grabbed for it. He flushed when he realized what he was doing, and held it out to Ronan.

"Keep it," Ronan said.

But Adam muttered something about how his pockets were stained and sticky from work. He passed it to Blue after a moment. He had no idea that this was Ronan's roughed-up heart. Blue folded it carefully and tucked it into her backpack. This alone made Ronan want to go with them, an overpowering envious fear, a sense that if he was not there they would split every soft thing between them and Ronan would remain rough and separate.

So he didn't say he wouldn't come, though he knew he had to bury the night horror before the smell became its own creature. But as they walked to the car he heard something else in the trees behind them.

 _Tck-tck-tck-tck-tck_.

The song wasn't the only thing he'd brought back. 

"I have something to do," he told them. "You can bring me up to speed on your psychic stuff later. Come on. Let's go."

He practically pushed Blue into the front seat of the Camaro.

"Hey!" she said. But Gansey and Adam were already discussing their upcoming garage shift. Ronan watched the Camaro pull away, taking them farther and farther from his horrors. 

Then he got in the BMW and prepared to go fast to tire the thing out, lose it for the night, get it confused, drive it to breaking. Like a race: Ronan against the worst parts of his mind.

-

Blue had work too, but it was composed of miscellaneous errands: walking dogs, planting flowers, reading to children. Blue had always been very proud that she could spot the many ways Henrietta would reward her for what were essentially neighborly deeds. Now, however, she felt a little cheated. Adam had told her that she made a good mechanic, light-fingered, with spry hands and enough curiosity to consider all the options. This felt like the first real compliment Adam had ever paid her, more than 'pretty' or 'nice,' and so naturally Blue stewed over it. Did it matter less when they all knew perfectly well that Boyd would never hire her?

Boyd's was a masculine establishment, wreathed in engine oil, the smell of cars punctuated by the kinds of shaving cream scents that were intended to beat a person into submission. But it wasn't like Adam gave out a million compliments. And he was trying; he really was.

Things with him did not feel as natural as they did with Gansey. Blue knew why. She'd seen the trailer, she'd seen him remote at the hospital. She knew, because he had finally admitted it to her, that he spent some days plagued by headaches, that changes in light could make him dizzy now. She knew that with Adam, it would take work. She wondered if she and Gansey could work and work and work at it, and it still it wouldn't be enough.

But if she felt in over her head, then how must Adam feel? 

"Am I selfish?" she'd asked Persephone a few nights ago, when they'd both been curled up on Persephone's high, tiny bed. Persephone had been knitting a sweater for someone with very long arms.

"Oh. About what?" she'd said.

Blue had haltingly explained. It was somehow easiest to explain this to Persephone because no matter how many condoms she packed into duffels, Blue though Persephone was mostly uninterested in all of this: boys and romance and whether it was fair, really, that something this new was weighed down by so much.

"Bake him a pie," Persephone had advised.

Blue had protested. That wasn't what she wanted to hear at all.

Persephone had fluttered her hands around her head like she was batting away invisible moths.

"When people are eating pie, they have to listen to you instead of talking at you," she said. "When they're not hungry anymore, they can listen to themselves."

That actually made sense.

"If I were him," Blue said, thinking of what Adam faced and feeling her heart squeeze with it, "I'd always be hungry."

Persephone had sighed. 

"Well," she'd said. "There's that. But he needs to line up that part of himself." And she'd made her hands flat like shark fins and lined one up over the other, demonstrating something that did not make a great deal of sense to Blue.

Blue didn't end up making a pie, but when Adam came in that evening ahead of Gansey, who was taking a call out on the curb, she offered him her last yogurt.

"Thanks, but it's alright," he said softly. He nodded politely at Calla in the reading room even though Calla was turned away and couldn't see, the nod so bred into him that he did it without thinking.

"We ate dinner with Boyd and his wife," he said, wrinkling his nose like he knew this was odd. "He wanted to celebrate Gansey moving out of the car."

"You can have the yogurt anyway," Blue said. "Come upstairs?"

Adam followed her up to her room and stood off to the side as she sat on her bed. He was still holding the yogurt. Blue wondered why he didn't come to her and then she remembered why.

"It's okay," she said awkwardly. "We talked about it."

Adam shook his head and swallowed hard, his neck bobbing. "I don't know what I should want and what I shouldn't," he admitted. "And anyway, you wouldn't be doing this if Gansey weren't in it. Even the kissing thing. If it wasn't for the curse, it would be Gansey."

Blue wanted to react to this, wanted to tell him he had no right to act like he knew what she wanted. But he was holding his stomach now with one arm, like he needed to do that to hold himself together. And nothing he said was actually wrong.

"I want you, too," she said. That was also not wrong. And it felt like the only kind thing to say.

"Adam, come here," she said. He shook his head again, stubborn, so she repeated it. Then he did come, sitting on the edge of the bed, away from her. After a minute he closed his eyes and leaned back, half-against the headboard. He still clutched the yogurt in one hand and held tight to his stomach with the other.

Blue took the yogurt and set it on the windowsill, then tugged on his hand until he turned to face her, fully against the headboard. She grabbed his other hand and sat cross-legged facing him, rubbing his knuckles softly. She wanted to pull him to her but she thought that wouldn't fix things -- _he_ needed to find a way to fix things, and it would be difficult, but she could remind him that she was with him, at least. She massaged his long, elegant fingers, calloused from work. Blue worked most days, and Gansey did too, but Adam worked days and nights. He hadn't even taken a break after he'd left the trailer, desperate to make his first rent payment and concerned with saving up enough to someday make the transition to college.

Probably the worst thing about Blue was that she couldn't suppress her envy when she thought of that. She knew it was wrong, but she couldn't help it. Adam had somehow managed to plan and work so hard that his escape, if he could only make it another year, was assured. Blue felt inadequate by comparison. She'd spent so long not caring about her grades that now she knew she was stuck here. She couldn't expect miraculous financial aid packages or scholarships. No one handed those out to girls with grades like hers.

"What's wrong?" Adam asked without opening his eyes. Blue had stopped massaging and started clutching. Annoyed at herself, she dropped his hands.

"I was thinking about school," was all she said.

Adam opened his eyes slowly.

"I'd still like to have you at Aglionby with us," he said, matter-of-fact. "Might make a nice change of pace."

"I hate to break it to you, but I think I'd only like about two people in your class."

"I only like about one," Adam said. "And he lives with me, so I kind of have to like him."

Blue realized that he had no idea Gansey wouldn't be returning to Aglionby with him. That felt strange, Gansey keeping this a secret. Blue was usually generous towards Gansey but now she was annoyed. Adam believed that he wouldn't face another friendless year this fall, but he would. Blue didn't like to be the one to keep that from him. 

She got up and went to her closet, where she dug through piles of fabric and artfully-torn shirts until she found her math book. She brought it to Adam and said, "Look, we're still on algebra. I think they're supposed to offer a calculus class but I'm pretty sure they don't. Anyway, I wouldn't have passed. They moved me back in math this year because I did so bad, so I couldn't go on to pre-cal. I still don't know if I will."

She wanted him to know that even a friendless Aglionby was more than what he'd get at her school. She didn't want him to go back in the fall and feel like he should give up.

Adam just pulled the book onto his lap and leafed through it, then looked annoyed at something he found in the back. He grabbed a pencil from a jar on Blue's windowsill and scratched out the instructions. He scribbled something new in the margins.

"This is too complicated, the way they're telling you to do it," he told her. "If you have trouble you should ask me. It's all logic anyway."

"I know that," Blue said. "I'm just not good at logic."

Adam looked at her beneath his fair lashes. "Blue, you're the most logical person I know. You can do this stuff. If you feel like you can't, like I said, just ask me."

Something warm spread within her. It prodded a question, one she'd always wanted to ask but never had with Gansey there.

"Did you go to Calhoun Elementary?"

It didn't make sense if he hadn't; that was the only elementary school in the area. But maybe he'd been living somewhere else. Either way, Blue didn't remember him.

He nodded. "From second grade. You?"

"From kindergarten," she said. "Who'd you have for second? Not Ms. Plunkett."

"Ms. Kibbee," Adam said.

That had been the good class. Ms. Plunkett's class had been been for the struggling students. All of Blue's classes were like that. She reeled them off now and Adam answered with his, and she could understand now why she didn't remember him. He'd always been an excellent student and Blue a poor one, so they'd never crossed paths. He'd gone to the better Junior High School, too, the one Blue's neighbors had all managed to get into. Blue remembered how horrible it was to know she wouldn't be moving on to the right school, and that she'd probably always be in classes with the kids who swore and shouted and chewed tobacco too young. Now she wondered what it must have been like for Adam, with his parents and his bruises and his uneven haircut, to end up in a school full of the kids from places like Fox Way and Raleigh Drive. 

She wrapped her arms around him. It didn't matter that it wasn't really what he needed, and it didn't matter that it wouldn't fix him because nothing Blue did could fix him. Right now, she didn't care if he needed fixing. She wanted to hold him.

"Promise me you'll make it another year," she told him, making the words loud and clear as she could. Adam stilled, then shuddered against her. He dipped his chin in a nod, polite as anything. _Yes, ma'am_. She took Ronan Lynch's singing paper out of her backpack and offered it to Adam. Adam's response was immediate. He brought it up to his good ear and crinkled it, letting the song ring out, sad and haunting and comforting, somehow.

This was how Gansey found them. He strode in briskly but then stopped, taking them in. Blue thought he would come sit with them but he sat on the floor, leaning back onto his arms and looking up at them like that.

He said, "I think we should just go see the sleeper ourselves, like you suggested. I tried to ask your mother or one of the others about it, and about the line and Noah. But they have a customer,"

"Oh," Blue said. "Alright."

Fox Way's customers were by and large a boring breed: people searching for dead relatives, people anxious about cheating on their spouses, people who'd just had a lousy day and had no one else to talk to about it. So Blue didn't bother to ask about the customer, but Adam did.

"What do they want from Blue's family?" 

Gansey shrugged. 

"He's very gray and Calla thinks he's in town looking for something."

"What?" Adam pressed. When Blue and Gansey both looked at him, he shrugged. "Whatever people think they need to ask a bunch of psychics for, it's got to be pretty interesting."

Blue suspected he only thought so because Adam was the kind of person who rarely asked anyone for anything. He clearly assumed most psychic readings were an act of desperation and not just a way to pass the time.

"We can probably peek in," she said. "Having me there will strengthen his reading anyway."

They went downstairs. Gansey was right. The man there was very gray. Ashy gray-blond hair, attractive gray five-o-clock shadow on his chin. His eyes were gray and his clothes were gray and his shoes were gray. Blue's mother was eyeing him in a veiled, gray kind of way that meant flirtation. _Maybe I will; maybe I won't_. 

She said, "Blue, you remember Mr. Gray."

Blue didn't, because generally she gave people about two seconds to catch her attention and they had to be more than just gray for that. 

" _Blue_ ," Maura said, not at all Maura at the moment but someone much younger and perhaps more annoying. "From the _flea market_."

It occurred to Blue that Calla was pouring herself a drink and Persephone had just polished off two. Neither of them was meeting her eyes. Calla took an extra glass someone had placed on the bookshelf, filled it, and passed it to Mr. Gray.

"It's Grey Goose," she said.

"We got it especially," Persephone sighed.

They'd known he was coming. Blue stared at them. Then at her mother, tracing something on the Ten of Swords very lovingly, too lovingly for the Ten of Swords. She remembered what Calla and Persephone had told her earlier in the week, about Maura possibly losing her mind.

"What is this?" Blue demanded.

"I told you," Maura said. "Mr. Gray from the flea market."

Mr. Gray did not look like he belonged in a flea market.

"Actually, I'm a hit man," Mr. Gray said.

Gansey laughed like it was a joke, but no one else did, not even Mr. Gray.

"The kind that kills people?" Adam asked, like he wasn't sure he should believe it either.

"There isn't any other kind," Calla said.

"He was going to pay us partly in poetry," Persephone said. "Germanic."

"Anglo-Saxon," the Gray Man corrected. 

Gansey seized on this, less distasteful than the hit man thing, and therefore something he clearly felt they should all talk about instead.

"Oh, like Bede and Alfred the Great," he said hurriedly. "I always liked that kind of thing. It starts and stops with Beowulf at school, of course--"

The Gray Man sighed, like he understood this to be a terrible waste. 

"--but I once passed English by asking to do an extra-credit research paper on Cædmon."

"I'm very partial to Cynewulf," the Gray Man said.

"Oh, naturally," Gansey said. "Substituting the Anglian for the West Saxon, it becomes--"

"Yes--" the Gray Man nodded.

"He just said he _kills people_ ," Adam said.

The room shifted. The Gray Man had in fact just said that, but nothing about him seemed to support it; somehow, he seemed like a very pleasant person to have a conversation with. Adam had ruined this. Adam flushed, but didn't look especially apologetic.

"I think Adam should help with the reading," Persephone said.

"Me?" Adam said.

"You," said Persephone. "It's easy as pie, trust me."

So Blue took him by the hand and led him to the only empty seat at the table, left of Persephone but to the right of Maura and the Gray Man. She sat on the couch. After a moment, Gansey joined her.

"I don't understand," Mr. Gray said now. Not like he was protesting. More like he just wanted an explanation. Both Maura and Calla looked to Persephone for this, though Persephone was notoriously bad at explanations.

"You have one more card," Persephone said, passing Adam her deck. "And it's sixteen cards from the top. You pick your card, and then Adam picks his. Sometimes it's easier to understand your card when you see what comes out differently for someone else."

"And where is Adam's card?" the Gray Man asked.

"That's for Adam to decide," Persephone said. And though her voice was small like always, it was firm, too. 

Adam and the Gray Man faced the decks. The Gray Man had Maura's, and Adam had Persephone's. Their expressions were each carefully blank; in this they were eerily similar. They were similar, too, in how colorless they both were. But they were colorless in starkly different ways: Adam dusty as Henrietta, the Gray Man steely as a weapon. The Gray Man plucked out the sixteenth card.

It was not a terrible card. It was the king of swords: strong, cold, impartial. Blue had never liked it, inasmuch as she picked favorites among the cards, but it was a very powerful card to choose. She wasn't sure how Adam could beat it. The king of swords was logic personified: master of facts and reason, unlikely to fall prey to his emotions. The Gray Man's colorless fingers tapped him, once, and Blue thought there was something coldly violent in the card once he lifted his hand. Brutality made sensible. 

Adam looked down at the deck in his hands.

"Can I ask it my own question?" he said, after a minute. "We had some things we were wondering about, too."

"No one can stop you if you do," Calla said, shrugging. 

Adam nodded. But he held the deck without choosing for long enough that Blue's eyes wandered away, back to the king of swords. That was a good card.

While she wasn't looking, Adam picked a card. Blue's eyes snapped back to him, drawn to the sudden, deliberate movement.

The Gray Man had picked the king of swords, and that was a good card. But Adam had picked the magician. That was better.

Calla downed her vodka and Maura started and the Gray Man said, "His fellow looks a little bit happier," without much emotion, just stating a fact.

Gansey adjusted his glasses and leaned across Blue to get a good look. He said, "Adam's is better, isn't it?" in tones of pride. He already knew the answer.

"I think that depends on the question Adam asked," Persephone said. "And the question Mr. Gray asked. It could be that each is the right answer for them."

"I had a lot of questions," Adam admitted. That made sense: they hadn't been able to settle on one question while coming back from Cabeswater. They wanted to know how to defeat Whelk, how to save the ley line, how to help Noah, what Ronan Lynch's abilities meant, what this mysterious sleeper meant. 

But now Maura said, "Ah," and Calla said, "Ah, and Persephone said, "Ah."

The Gray Man said, "Ah?" in a manner both interested and polite.

"The king of swords is very good at impartial decisions," said Persephone. "He reacts to facts."

"And the magician doesn't?" Adam asked nervously.

"The magician doesn't have to be a decision-maker. The magician is good at making connections," Persephone told him. "And when you have more questions than answers, Adam, you need that much more."

-

Persephone invited Adam to keep the card for a little while, so he brought it home with him, wrapped in Ronan's singing paper. When Gansey asked to see the card that night, Adam passed it to him. 

It was so hot that Gansey was sitting cross-legged on the bed in nothing but his underwear. When he spoke, there was something wistful in his voice.

"Glendower was a magician."

"I thought he had magicians," Adam said.

"Both. They followed him, but he knew magic himself. That's how he came to lead them, after all."

Gansey passed the card back. There was nowhere to put it in the overstuffed clutter of their bed because the night before Gansey had been building the local movie theater all over one side. His glue and cardboard and paint tins were still there, lined up in rows. So Adam just slid the car under his pillow, a sorry affair with less stuffing than pillowcase. 

Now Gansey looked at him hopefully. They didn't have sex every night, because some nights Adam worked and even when he didn't, he was often tired. But they touched each other often enough that Adam felt like he was cheating. He wasn't sure who he was cheating -- Blue, maybe, because she didn't live with them and so she had less of this -- but it felt like he was too greedy still, like this shouldn't have come to him.

Not tonight. Adam wouldn't feel that way tonight. Gansey was treating him like he'd won a strange victory at Fox Way, and Adam would let himself believe it for now. Believing it made him feel better. Leaving things in a good place with Blue made him feel better too. 

There was only one thing that bothered him: the sputtering of Ronan Lynch's heart beneath his frantic palms. But Ronan hadn't died. Adam closed his eyes and tried to tell himself that this made his own behavior alright. Gansey's fingers passed lightly over his hair. Adam leaned into the touch as much as he could. Sometimes he felt like if he leaned in too hard, he'd lose something of himself.

"Do you want to call Blue?" he asked Gansey, finally. It felt fairer that way. Gansey reached for his phone.

"Congress? I hope Congress isn't calling you for the reasons I am. I've met some members of Congress. You really wouldn't want to do this with them."

Then he put Blue on speakerphone. Adam climbed out of bed briefly to stuff a towel under the door because even if the Father and Brothers slept on the other side of the building, he was still paranoid about them hearing. When he turned back to the bed, Gansey's underwear was off on sabbatical. Gansey was lying on his side waiting for him, cock already hard, one hand splayed on his well-formed abdomen. 

_Are you ready?_ he mouthed. Adam nodded. He pulled off his clothes and climbed in, spooning Gansey and letting his cock find the crevice of Gansey's ass, moving against him and feeling it harden. Gansey dug back into him, making it better. He started to describe this in his magnificent voice, so that Blue would know what they were doing. Adam reached a hand around and began to tug on his cock just to hear him falter and grasp for words -- with Gansey, there was a sweet spot where his sublime vocabulary gave way completely. Adam loved that. He kissed Gansey's shoulder as he worked him, hearing his marvelous accent stumble.

"What about you, Blue?" Adam finally asked, when Gansey was groaning. He didn't need her to tell him because he could hear her fast breaths, so he tried to envision it and tell her instead, her and Gansey. Was she rubbing herself? Was she crooking a finger in? Did she want to know what that did to him, how that made him grind against Gansey on the bed, how hearing about it made Gansey bury a fist in his mouth?

Adam's vocabulary wasn't wondrous, but he had them gasping soon enough, Gansey coming into his hand and Blue wet and breathing hard across town in Fox Way. 

"What about you?" Blue said quietly, after it was clear she was spent. "Adam?"

"I'm alright," Adam told her. His hardness was painful, but he didn't want anything to change. Gansey's back was warm against his chest and Blue's voice was a lulling, pleasant thing, the way it shaped his name. 

_You're with them,_ he told himself. _And the world isn't ending. It doesn't matter that you're damaged. It doesn't matter that you're so different from them. It doesn't matter that they want each other. You're with them, too._

"I'd like to take care of him, Jane," Gansey said, after a minute. "But it's going to occupy my mouth."

Blue laughed. Adam laughed a little too, despite himself, his eyes opening in time to see Gansey turn and face him. 

"Can you describe as long as you can?" Gansey asked. He pressed a kiss to the corner of Adam's mouth and Adam's cock throbbed, wired as it was to the part of him that was still astonished by Gansey, by his extraordinary voice and his war hero features and the way he scooted down now and tongued Adam's balls, licked along his cock. Adam tried to describe it but he'd always been worse at speaking his pleasure than Gansey was, his words weaker when it came to this topic.

"It's okay, Adam," Blue told him eventually. 

So then he could stop and give himself over to it, to the way Gansey's mouth was potent and wandering, lifting his legs to lick at his ass, then coming back to go warm and wet around his cock. Gansey sucked like he liked it, with a hum in the back of his throat and his hands tight on Adam's ass. Adam wrapped a hand in his hair and kept him there and he didn't complain; when he pulled back it was only to lick hungrily and sloppily along Adam's cock, his eyes fixed on Adam's the whole time. Adam was panting now, undone. When he came Gansey pulled off and let Adam hit his face, and neither of them described it to Blue because it didn't feel like something she would be into, but it was powerful for Adam, the way Gansey didn't care if Adam came across his jaw and hair, the way he opened his mouth to catch it. 

He had to clean himself, so he grinned sheepishly at Adam and went to the bathroom to wash up. Adam crouched near the phone and said, "Blue?"

Her response was a sleepy hum. He reminded her to hang up the phone so that the busy signal wouldn't wake her and waited until she did so. When Gansey returned he moved over for him, grimacing at the wet spot.

"Gallant, Adam, thank you," Gansey said. "You can sleep on top of me. No, only if you want to. I guess it's too hot."

It was hot but Adam had never lived in a place where it wasn't overpoweringly hot in the summer, so he spread out half on top of Gansey anyway. He closed his eyes and fell into dreaming.

He never remembered his dreams. He didn't remember this one when he woke hours later, but he knew for the first few seconds that he'd had it. Just knowing about the dream was enough to snap Adam's thoughts to Ronan Lynch. It was harder to be jealous of him with Gansey shifting beside him. It was harder to tell himself that his behavior around Ronan the day before had been acceptable. With his straight teeth and savage smile, Ronan Lynch could have had anything. But Adam's behavior had not been acceptable. 

Adam got up and rescued Blue's yogurt from the mini-fridge to serve as breakfast, then went to take a shower. He was brushing his teeth when Gansey got up and hugged him from behind, soundlessly kissed the back of his head. Gansey had work at Nino's almost all day today. Adam only had a night shift at the factory followed by an early morning shift at the demo yard. He knew he should rest but after Gansey left he found himself reaching instead for the magician card. It didn't feel like it should be his. It felt like it should belong to Ronan. Adam rescued Ronan's paper from his stiff, oil-encrusted pockets and smoothed it out and thought of what it meant to take something like this from the ley line, what it meant that Ronan Lynch knew Cabeswater so intimately, believed it was his own mind. That Ronan had asked Adam and Gansey and Blue to help him protect is.

Adam hadn't been lying yesterday. He'd had a lot of questions. But the one his mind had been unable to let go of at the time he'd picked the card was:

_Why is he helping us? What does he want?_

How stupid he was. Ronan was asking for help. Adam had never been good at that kind of thing, so he was bad at recognizing it in others. But that was no excuse. 

He had a copy of the school directory somewhere, salvaged from the trailer mostly because he didn't like to think of his father destroying it in a rage. He flipped now through the pages for the junior class. He didn't really expect to find anything next to Ronan's name except for a dormitory and a room number, but there was another address there too. Not far from Henrietta. It even had a name: the Barns.

According to Gansey, Ronan had been kicked out of school, so he wouldn't be at the dormitories. Maybe this was where he'd be instead. 

It would have been a twenty-minute drive by car. Adam didn't have a car, so he made it in forty. This was outside Henrietta, in one of the nicer places just beyond the valley, and Adam was self-conscious as he passed the manicured main street. He meant to leave Henrietta someday, but he rarely left it now. Whenever he went beyond the town limits he would start to realize that there were holes in his shirt, that his haircut was too uneven, that his features betrayed where he'd been born.

The address in the directory was out past the tidy shopping area and glossy gingerbreaded houses. The roads became rutted and then became dirt, the lawns gave way to fields and shining new tractors. The air out here was golden and light, the mountains ironed into pleasant green hills. There wasn't a single human soul but there were a lot of cows and the occasional horse. He thought he'd find the Barns at the end of the road, but what he found instead were two huge overhanging oak trees that bracketed a clearly-private drive. If he glanced between them he could see that the oaks gave way to plum trees, some giving fruit, some delayed and still a riot of blossoms and color.

There wasn't a no trespassing sign. But no trespassing was _conveyed_. Faced with this place, Adam found that he couldn't take a step further. It wasn't for Adam. He rubbed a tear in his jeans and thought of how many worlds and how few miles separated this place from the trailer.

There was a mailbox, cheery blue, tucked into the base of one of the oak trees. It didn't say anything, but then it didn't need to. Like the plum-lined drive, it asked Adam to state his business and then leave. Sighing, Adam pulled a pencil and the singing paper out of his pocket. He hadn't brought along any other paper. He almost didn't want to write on this one. He knew it was already marred with his scribbles, but it wasn't for scribbling anymore. Ronan had changed its purpose or essence somehow, made it wilder and better. When Adam touched the tip of the pencil to it, it sang so brightly that he worried he might ruin the song if he used it to do something as mundane as leave a note.

"Kerah," something said, trying to stubbornly echo the song.

It was a raven. Adam hardly had time to identify it and realize that Ronan must be near before Ronan appeared. The BMW came into a view and slid to a stop in front of Adam, dusted with pollen and blossoms.

Ronan always looked furious, so the fact that he looked angry now didn't bear mentioning. At least his incandescent rage made it easier for Adam to abandon any politeness.

"I wasn't trespassing," Adam said, instead of hello. "I just wanted to leave you a note."

"Note noted. Fuck off back to town, now."

Adam shook his head. "I wanted to ask you about Cabeswater."

Something broke the anger on Ronan's face. Only Ronan could wear genuine curiosity like that, like an emergency.

"Whelk stole it from you, didn't he?" Adam said. "Cabeswater's always been yours. You're tied to the ley line, to Cabeswater, and if we helped get Cabeswater back to you--"

"I gave it up in the first place," Ronan snarled. "Months ago. I didn't even know he had control of it until you did."

Adam filed this away and turned to another question he had. 

"Noah can't appear because the line is being drained. The same reason Cabeswater can't appear sometimes."

"That's not the only reason Noah can't appear," Ronan said, but he didn't elaborate beyond that. Adam didn't know if he stopped deliberately or if it was the strange rattling that made him stop.

 _Tck-tck-tck_.

"What's--"

"Get in the car," Ronan said. Immediate. Uncompromising. Adam had to trust the flicker of brutal fear on his face. Adam got in. 

Ronan tore down the drive so fast that Adam barely had time to process its uncanny beauty. At the end of it there was a house, shabby and large and comfortable, with windchimes on the porch and the smell of apples beckoning them in. Ronan pulled Adam down a hallway packed cozily with expensive picture frames, Lynch boys in miniature, into an airy sunroom hung with instruments. There was a chair sitting rudely in the middle of the room, apart from all the other furniture for no apparent reason.

"Stay here," Ronan barked. "Put the chest against the door. It doesn't want you. It's me. But if it gets past me, don't wait. Just fight."

He was gone before Adam could protest. 

There was a chest, but Adam didn't put it against the door. He planned to go after Ronan. The chair stopped him. 

It was a recliner, and it was reclining like something was weighing it down. Adam's mind told him that it must be the imprint of someone who'd been there recently and now wasn't. But it didn't feel like that. The room felt occupied. The chair felt occupied, though none of Adam's senses acknowledged that fact. It was ghostly and frightening, this sensation that he wasn't alone.

Adam stretched a hand into the empty space just above the recliner. He brushed against something.

He jumped back, fear pounding in his ears. There was a spirit sitting there, impossible to see but warm to the touch. Adam's good ear began to detect the easy in-out, the persistent breathing, like someone was sleeping right next to him. Adam's breath stammered out a fearful counterpoint. He felt momentarily thrown outside himself by fright.

But nothing happened. The spirit didn't seem to move. Its calm breaths didn't stop. Adam put a hand on it and felt a lightweight fabric. He tugged it and a corner came off, revealing a perfect hand with oblong, ladylike nails. He tugged it the rest of the way and there she was. Beautiful, tranquil, asleep. It made sense that this was the ghost for this house, but not that this was a ghost belonging to Ronan. Ronan wore his cruelty like war paint, proud about it. Adam knew from looking at this woman that any cruelty she engaged in would be a misunderstanding, and that any cruelty dealt to her would slide right off. She had the kind of rare, wealthy good looks people described in inhuman terms, _orchid_ or _nymph_ or _warrior goddess_. In this alone she was a great deal like Ronan. Adam covered her back up again. He wasn't supposed to see this. 

There was a crash from somewhere just outside the house. Adam followed it. He found Ronan in the back, in front of an ancient shed, trying to force down the heavy bolt that locked it closed. Adam heard a rattling like claws on aluminum walls:

 _Tch-tck-tck-tck-tck_.

"I told you to stay in the room," Ronan snapped. 

Adam didn't respond. Ronan had probably wanted him there with the chest against the door to keep the woman safe, and he understood that, but he didn't want to argue when the thing in the shed was throwing its hissing weight against the door. He threw his own weight behind Ronan to get it latched. Ronan's bird pecked anxiously at their ankles as they struggled. When the shed was locked shut, Ronan picked her up and brought her to his cheek, smoothing down her feathers.

"Can you use a shovel?" he asked Adam.

"I think that's one of those things that comes natural. They're not all that complicated."

Ronan made a rude gesture and the angry scratches on his arms shouldn't have made this somehow more offensive, but they did.

"There's a shovel in that barn over there, behind the door. Go get it." 

He stomped off in another direction entirely. Adam watched him go, then did as told, feeling less like he'd been ordered and more like Ronan had just given him permission to explore the nearest barn. It was dusty and smelled of hay inside, and Adam blinked through the gloom until he identified a herd of statues. Cows. Sleeping like statues, like the woman in the chair. They weren't covered in blankets of invisibility, though. It would take too many. Adam noted what he'd been allowed to note and grabbed the shovel.

Ronan was now dragging something forward, something with tattered wings and a snatching beak and eyes that left Adam hypnotized with revulsion. It was dead. Adam took a minute to steady himself against the rail of the back porch. Ronan watched him impassively, like if Adam vomited it was all the same to him.

"What's--"

"Night horror. I'll kill the other one later. It's tired. It'll wear down soon. Can you dig?"

He pointed at a spot just beyond the back of the shed. When Adam had collected himself, he took the shovel and began to dig there, as Ronan went away and came back with some rope and started to bundle the dead creature, snapping bones to make it more compact, tying its motionless wings close to its horrible abdomen. Adam didn't want to look, but he couldn't look away from how resigned Ronan was to this. Ronan knew this creature intimately. His raven fluttered around him, like she held all the anxiety for both of them.

It took the better part of forty minutes to dig a decent hole, even when Ronan went to get his own shovel and pitched in. When they were done Ronan rolled the dead thing into the hole with the toe of his boot, frowning. 

"What do we do with the other one?" Adam asked. It was still rattling around inside the shed.

"It doesn't want you," Ronan said. "So you can leave."

His dismissal was absolute, with an edge that promised cruelty if Adam didn't comply.

"Fuck off," Adam said.

"This is my house," Ronan said. "You're not from here. You're not even from this area. You're nothing. So actually no, Parrish. _You_ fuck off."

Adam's ears burned as he started back to the driveway, discharged. It would be a long walk back to the oak trees and his bicycle on foot, but Ronan wasn't coming around to offer the BMW and Adam wasn't going to ask. He'd been permitted to see some of this place. He wouldn't ask for more. Ronan was right. It wasn't his.

It wasn't the Gray Man's, either. But he still came down the drive now in a small champagne car that didn't suit him at all, so that Adam had to squint against the bright sunlight to make him out.

"Adam," he said, slowing the car. He didn't say it like he was upset and he didn't say it like he was dangerous, but only very blankly, like a hello. "I'm guessing you won't tell me why you're here."

Adam said nothing. He and the Gray Man regarded each other. The Gray Man didn't frighten Adam because he was a hit man; he frightened Adam because he seemed to think that being deferential and polite about violence was a kind of bravery. Adam had always thought so, too. Now he wasn't sure.

"Well, then I won't have to tell you why I'm here," the Gray Man said finally. He started the car again. Adam watched him drive the rest of the way to the house and then get out and go in, like he owned the place, like he was familiar with it. A part of Adam didn't immediately react to this. After the woman in the chair and the night horror in the dust, the hit man in the driveway seemed to be happening to someone else.

But then Adam thought, _the magician is good at making connections._

He turned around. He caught up with the Gray Man in the house, just outside the door to the room where the woman sat sleeping and invisible.

"Why are you here?" Adam asked. His voice sounded too loud to his ears. He couldn't seem to get the vowels to stop painting a picture of Henrietta.

"Why are you?" Mr. Gray asked, less like he was interested and more like it was just a polite thing to ask.

Adam thought about this. 

"I was burying a secret."

Mr. Gray said, "I'm here to dig one up."

"The one you killed last year," Adam tried. 

_The magician is good at making connections._

"That's very good," said Mr. Gray, "but no. My employer wanted Niall Lynch gone and now he's gone, but I still don't have what I came for."

"What you came for?" Adam echoed. He wasn't sure he wanted to know. 

"You wouldn't happen to have an object that can take things out of dreams, would you?" Mr. Gray asked. "Or know where it is?"

He wasn't revealing this. He was just stating it, impersonal and factual. This was just a part of the job. Treasure hunting. Object hunting. Ronan hunting.

It took too many excruciating seconds for Adam to shake his head, but the Gray Man seemed to understand.

"Good," he told Adam. "Then we should have no problems. You should go, Adam."

Adam went. His skin felt inadequate, like he was visiting inside it. He went as far as the front porch and then he made himself turn and circle back around the house, and then he made himself find the place with the rattling shed and the pit with the dead night horror in it. Ronan wasn't there, but the the back door to the house was open. Adam fought the sense that this was fine, that if he ignored his own reactions and ignored his shaking hands then Ronan being in a house with a hit man was perfectly fine.

_The magician is good at making connections._

It wasn't fine. It wasn't safe for Ronan. Adam told himself that this skin was his, even if he didn't really feel it, and crossed to the open back door. 

Ronan and the Gray Man barreled out of it. 

Ronan was animated as an attack dog, untethered to the scratches on his arms and the bruise on his cheekbone, freed by these things instead. And the Gray Man was fast and precise and seemed willing to politely stop at any time, except that he didn't. He just regarded the general idea, and then reacted blow for blow. Adam understood these things after what felt like a few endless minutes. He couldn't seem to focus properly. When it came to the actual mechanics of the fight, his mind couldn't settle on what he was actually looking at. It was fast, and Adam was slow. 

_The magician is good at making connections._

Adam's connections weren't working right, but he would try. He felt his body lurch to the shed and decided that was fine. Getting the bolt undone was easier than shoving it closed. Getting between Ronan and the Gray Man and forcing Ronan down, covering him there in the dust -- that was fine. Adam was watching someone else do it. 

He thought about how once Boyd had told him he was a brave person, a good person, the way he looked after his mother. A lot of people had told Adam that, but it had never been true to the situation, so now when he thought of it it made him anxious. He couldn't seem to let go of the thought.

Ronan was struggling to get him off. Above them, the freed night horror screeched horribly and shook. The Gray Man came with a gray knife and a gray revolver. He selected the latter, took aim, and shot. The night horror shook in the air and then fell down onto them. It coated them in its greasy wings and now Adam's body did vomit, off to the side, catching the front of his shirt but not Ronan. The Gray Man's steps faded and he was gone. Adam's body was still retching. 

He didn't get a new shirt until Ronan was shaking his arm, holding one out. 

Adam couldn't remember what must have just happened. His mind put it together in small and careful and slow pieces. Ronan was dragging the second night horror to the pit and tossing it in. He took the shovel and began to fill in the hole, his movements mechanical. When he was done he walked with his strides matching the strides taken by Adam's legs. To the car. This time Adam didn't worry about his body making the long walk because Ronan drove them to where his bike was, and then put the bike in the back.

They were halfway back to Henrietta when it occurred to Adam to explain.

"That man--"

"I know what he is," Ronan said.

Adam nodded.

"He was looking at my mother," Ronan said, and his tone was so dark that the anger in it glittered. It took Adam a few seconds to realize that Ronan was admitting to the woman who haunted that chair.

"Did he wake her up?"

"She doesn't do that," Ronan said. "She just sleeps."

It was a magic with no wonder in it, just bitterness. Adam closed his eyes tight. He wondered what it would be like to be so vulnerable, and to have someone who loved you wrap you up so that you could not be harmed. Adam no longer tried to be invisible, himself. It had never worked for him. 

"What did you want to tell me?" Ronan asked him suddenly.

"What?"

"Your note."

The note felt pointless now. Ronan's bird pecked around in the backseat, like she wanted to gouge holes in everything, and Adam pulled the singing paper out of his pocket and rustled it just to hear her settle.

"I haven't held up my end of the bargain with you," he said. 

Ronan said, "You went to Cabeswater. That was our bargain."

It felt like there should be more. Adam wasn't used to easy bargains. Being let off the hook this simply introduced something like pain in him, and Adam invited the pain to stay a little. He didn't want Ronan Lynch to dismiss him this way.

"Blue's family thinks this may all be connected to a sleeper," he told Ronan, watching Ronan stiffen at the word choice. "Not at your house. It's out in the mountains. We were going to go investigate in a few days, drive out in the Camaro. You should come."

He didn't think Ronan would say yes, but when the car pulled up in front of St. Agnes, Ronan nodded. 

\- 

Maitland called early in the third week of June, when St. Agnes was so hot that Gansey was starting to welcome the eternally cold water in the shower.

He had to get out of the shower to take the call. His teeth chattered but his body was soon sweating. Adam was at the factory and he had the apartment to himself, so he could have taken the call in the main room. But instead Gansey sat on the cold porcelain edge of the tub, feeling the sting of the water on his back. This spot was marginally less unbearable than the rest of the apartment. He put the phone to his ear and heard Maitland launch into an explanation.

He wasn't getting his money back.

Maitland didn't say this. Instead he said, "Of course, there's always a chance," and he said, "The important thing is that we know truth, Richard, and now we salvage what we can," and he said, "It isn't the end of the world."

He was right. It was not the end of the world. It only felt like it. The Gansey Gansey had been now slipped out of reach completely. Gansey had no idea if he should mourn him. He thought not. He became annoyed at how he was trying for breath. He hated how his heartbeat seemed to come in irregularly, how his throat tightened.

"Richard?" Maitland asked anxiously.

Gansey had to put the phone down for a minute to locate his voice. When he found it, he said, "I'm fine."

His mother had always told him that it was wrong to parade an unsolvable problem in front of someone and expect them to solve it for you. His father had always told him that a gentleman was a gentleman at all times, stopping only when someone gave him a clear reason not to be. Maitland hadn't given Gansey a reason; he was only giving Gansey difficult news. That wasn't Maitland's fault. Gansey had tasked him with something unsolvable.

"Thank you for telling me," he said, after a minute.

Maitland talked for twenty more minutes or so. There were things he could still do, still would do, things to make sure Gansey was set up properly. He asked questions about school and work and appeared to be taking careful notes. He promised to have people research what sounded like remarkable opportunities. Gansey's head ached. He didn't want remarkable opportunities. He wondered why, even now, he was offered these things. He'd never deserved them. He wanted to cast away the boy who would have taken them without a second glance, who would have been nothing more than these last vestiges of privilege.

He listened politely until Maitland was done and thanked him again, then hung up the phone. When he went back into the main room to put the phone away, he thought he saw a glimmer of something by the window.

"Noah?"

Selfishly, he wanted it to be Noah, as though Noah hadn't done more than enough for him. But it was a trick of the light. He went to finish his shower. When he was done, he found that working on the model Henrietta didn't calm him the way it usually did. He wanted Adam and Blue but both were working and he wasn't supposed to meet them until later today. He picked up his phone again and looked over his correspondence with Roger Malory. He hadn't told Malory about Glendower being woken, but now he sent him a message asking what he thought Glendower would be like, when someone found and woke him.

It made no sense that Glendower was gone in this way. Whelk had taken him, and yet Glendower was a king. Surely kings couldn't just be taken.

Malory didn't respond; he was a fickle communicator at the best of times. Gansey put the phone down and stewed miserably in the heat until an appropriate amount of time had passed, enough that it wouldn't be strange if he arrived at Fox Way just a little early. Then he headed for Fox Way, a little early.

He was increasingly fond of the small blue house, rickety home that it was, site of unusual developments. He liked that Blue lived there. He liked that they didn't feel the need to run him out of the house for what he had with Blue, and had instead actually offered free condoms. He liked how at Fox Way, the obvious hardly ever happened. 

Today the house had an incorporeal argument lurking inside it. It haunted the house through the angry sound of cups slamming in the kitchen. Gansey wouldn't even have known it was an argument if Blue's cousin Orla hadn't told him so explicitly when she opened the door, or if the slamming didn't make it so impossible to sit peacefully in the reading room. Jimi poked her head in to offer the completely unnecessary suggestion that Gansey not go into the kitchen. Persephone floated past and said, "It's not your fault. Don't worry." 

Gansey appreciated this, though it did make him worry that this was somehow his fault. 

He decided that the slamming had to be Maura and Calla. It would be rude to eavesdrop and so he didn't, but he did make a few trips to the bathroom to check that his shirt collar wasn't too shabby today. He caught only the barest snatches of conversation. 

The clearest was when Calla said flatly, "That thing out in Dittley's cave is connected to Butternut, but it's not him. So don't make this something it's not."

"Butternut," Gansey told his collar's reflection. He couldn't make sense of it. And it sounded like the kind of thing it would only be embarrassing to write Malory about. 

He assumed that Adam wouldn't arrive until after Blue did, because Adam rarely left work early, but today he was on the front step ten minutes before they'd agreed to meet. 

"Hey," he said, after Persephone let him in. He handed her something. Her card. He said, "Sorry to keep it so long."

Her eyes were large. "How long did you keep it?"

"A few days?" Adam said. 

Persephone sighed. "You could have kept it longer than that." She sounded even smaller than usual.

"Sorry?" Adam said. But she was already down the hall. Adam shot a look at Gansey. Gansey shrugged. Adam sat next to him on the couch. 

"Is it alright if Ronan comes?" he asked. 

"Of course," Gansey said, surprised. "Is he meeting us?"

"Well, I think I told him we were taking your car and he should come."

"We should pick him up," Gansey decided. "I know where he lives." He texted Ronan quickly, asking him to meet them at the gates to the subdivision. But when Blue had arrived and they piled into the car and headed in that direction, Adam began to look confused. 

"You're living here?" he asked, as Ronan climbed into the backseat where Blue was. 

"Can't go home, can I?"

"Can't you?"

Ronan's, "No," did not sound like a "No," but like a particularly nasty swear. Gansey stared at him in the rearview mirror, not sure how he managed this. 

Either way, he didn't want it to set the tone. 

"Jane," he said, as they pulled away from the subdivision, "Calla was telling me the other day that you could use some practice learning how to drive."

Ronan snorted. Blue shot them both a nasty look and said, "I know how to drive. I just don't get a lot of practice."

"Would you like to practice now? You know the way to this place better than I do."

Blue was wide-eyed. 

"Seriously?" Ronan said. 

"I'd love to practice," Blue snapped. So Gansey pulled over and swapped places with her, pointing out what she needed to know and then sinking into the back behind the drivers' seat. Her nervousness wasn't lost on him, nor was it lost on Adam. 

"If you can fix it, you can probably drive it," Adam said from the passenger side. 

And she could. She could drive it very slowly. Extremely slowly. And whenever Gansey tried to encourage her to trust herself she only snapped at him again.

Ronan thumped the arm of Adam's seat. "Hi," he said. "This is torture."

"She knows where we're going," Adam said, echoing Gansey. 

"When are we going to get there? The year 2335?"

"Jane just needs to trust herself," Gansey repeated. He leaned forward and directed her hand on the clutch, feeling her warm skin, her hair tickling his nose. 

"It's at your disposal, Jane," he told her quietly. Blue met his eyes in the rearview mirror and he nodded. She was marvelous. She should feel free to be marvelous. Caution was fine, but it didn't really suit her. 

She floored it. They were on a bare road surrounded by bare fields and there was nothing at all but this sudden rush, the overwhelming thrill of going very fast very quickly. Adam leaned back in his seat and shot Gansey a look of rare joy. Even Ronan looked viciously pleased. He rolled down his window and stuck his head out, swearing savage delight. 

Gansey kept his hand on Blue's hand, his head on her shoulder. She was so warm it pained him, so determined and proud and alive that he felt the events of the morning leave him. 

"You should drive more often, Jane," he whispered, just for her, and then he turned to watch Adam watching Ronan Lynch. He felt a little cheated by this, but said nothing. It was an ugly emotion to wrap around his pride for Blue. He discarded it. 

They pulled up in front of a dilapidated farmhouse.

"The sleeper lives _here_?" Ronan said.

Gansey felt instinctively that between living in the Camaro and living in this house, he'd take the Camaro, but he didn't want Adam and Blue to know this, so he said, "It's certainly rustic."

"It's a murder shack," Ronan said. "Look at the _yard_."

"We're here to clean the yard," Blue snapped.

Three pairs of eyes swiveled to her. She didn't explain further, just stepped out of the car.

"Here's a tip," Ronan said, turning back to Gansey. "Get back in the front seat and floor it."

Gansey would never have done that to Blue. But he still felt the need to say, as a careful explanation, "It looks like Jane took the keys."

"Shit," Ronan said, sounding anxious.

Adam sighed at both of them and got out of the car. By the time Ronan and Gansey caught up with him, in a field of rotting sofas and rotting pickup trucks and thriving flowers planted in rotting toilets, Blue was already knocking on the front door. The largest man Gansey had ever seen answered. His wifebeater alone was roughly the size of a schooner sail. Gansey blinked at him before noticing that Adam and Ronan had each jumped back a foot.

"IS THIS YOUR WORK CREW?" said the man.

"Probably not. They might have to wait inside while I do the work," Blue said. She shot a challenging look at Ronan in particular. 

Ronan said, "Wait inside? I'll wait in the fucking car."

"COME ON IN NOW," said the enormous man. "I HAVE SOME BOOTS THAT MIGHT FIT THE ONE WITH THE FANCY FACE."

With a quick look at the others, Gansey confirmed that his face was the fancy one.

"That's perfectly alright. I have shoes," he told the large man. His accent sounded very wrong to his ears, too formal and affected. He frowned. The man looked at Gansey's Top Siders and laughed, then went inside, swiftly followed by Blue. 

The others all eventually went inside too, even Ronan. The man's name was Jesse Dittley. He had a sleeper in some kind of ruined tower out back, and the sleeper was cursing his home. Gansey could believe this because his house certainly looked cursed. Adam was sitting on an armchair that was sagging almost to the floor, Gansey was lodged between piles of old milk bottles, and Ronan was being slowly circled by two cats whose expressions, eerily enough, matched his. His expression conveyed that if he thought he could have gotten away with punching two very rude cats and bolting, he'd have done it three seconds ago. 

Blue looked comparatively at home. She accepted some vibrantly-colored liquid that was clearly pretending to be juice. Adam took his without complaint as well. Ronan shot Gansey a desperate look but the fight was lost. Gansey said, politely, "Thank you so much," when his turn came. Ronan looked furious.

"Jesus," he said, without taking the mug Jesse offered him.

"DON'T YOU TAKE THE LORD'S NAME IN VAIN NOW," Jesse cautioned.

Impossibly, Ronan nodded like this was sensible, and took the mug.

"Here's the deal," Blue said. "I thought we could fix your yard free of charge, and then we could explore your cave."

"DON'T THE BOYS LIKE WHAT I'VE DONE WITH THE PLACE?"

The boys looked everywhere but at Jesse Dittley.

"The fancy one loves it," Blue said. "Right?"

"It's charming," Gansey managed. "But think of the increase in property value."

Jesse allowed this. When they'd all drunk their juice, he brought Gansey a pair of boots that were far too large and directed him to leave his fancy shoes just inside the door. 

"I'M PUTTING WATER ON THE PORCH FOR YOU. MIND THE DOGS DON'T TAKE IT."

Gansey looked around for dogs, but the dogs were lucky and had escaped.

"LISTEN TO YOUR FOREMAN NOW," Jesse added. "IT'S GOOD THAT THERE ARE FOUR OF YOU. ONE OF YOU CAN WATCH FOR SNAKES."

Ronan swore he wasn't doing that. Adam ended up promising to be the snake-watcher. Blue began to point out the smaller debris and direct them to put it all in Jesse's battered pickup. Ronan crossed his arms and scowled at the debris. Sighing, Adam began to pick it up.

"What about you?" Blue hissed. She was talking to Gansey, which Gansey felt was unfair. Still, he moved to collect some scrap metal.

Blue in fact made a very apt foreman. She was able to spot what would take the work of two or three boys (large sections of timber studded with nails, cracked sinks, toilets) and what she could drag across to the pickup herself (buckets of old shoes, cardboard boxes full of cracked tupperware), and even what Ronan could be encouraged to pick up on his own (a planter full of rainwater so disgusting it was its own fascinating ecosystem, a battered floral suitcase full of doll heads that he took out and lined up on the dashboard of the pickup). She clearly had a plan: to move from smaller items to larger items. When all that was left were the things that even all four of them together couldn't move, Gansey, who was struggling to lift an armchair into the pickup with Adam, heard her across the yard calmly requesting that Jesse bring her a chainsaw.

"I'll take that," Ronan said. His tone sounded much brighter than Gansey had ever heard it sound.

Blue said, "Why you?"

"Who's going to use it? You?"

"Have you ever used a chainsaw before?" 

"I named my bird Chainsaw," Ronan said, which sounded suspiciously like a no.

"You named a bird _Chainsaw?_ "

"Your name is _Blue_."

But Blue had had the foresight to bring protective eyewear, so she got the chainsaw. Ronan glowered, but by now he must have been worn down by the sun, because his complaints dwindled significantly. Possibly the loud, furious shredding of the chainsaw also soothed him.

When they were done, it was nearly dark and Jesse regarded them from the porch, silent and still large enough that it was a little unnerving to have him stare at them so quietly.

"SOME OF THE SLEEPERS IN THESE MOUNTAINS YOU WANT TO STAY SLEEPING," he told them finally. "BEST THING YOU COULD DO IS NEVER GO IN THAT CAVE OF MINE."

"Are you backing out?" Ronan said, annoyed. "We cleaned your _yard_."

"THAT SLEEPER THERE MADE MY WIFE PULL OUT SO MUCH OF HER HAIR SHE HAD TO LEAVE. RECKON' IT KILLED MY SON'S DOG, TOO."

"So why don't you move?" Gansey asked.

"IT'S HOME," Jesse said, at the same time that Ronan switched sides and said, "It's his _home_ ," with a roll of his eyes.

"Look," Blue said finally. "Can we go in the cave or not?"

Jesse stared at the four of them.

"COME BACK DURING THE DAY," he said. "I DON'T MIND WHAT DAY. YOU CAN GO IN WHEN IT'S LIGHT, NOT THAT IT MAKES ANY DIFFERENCE. IT GETS DARK ENOUGH FAST DOWN THERE."

-

It occurred to the Gray Man that the Greywaren could be a person.

Logically, it made no sense to use a magical object to take a vicious scaly attacking creature out of dreams, not that most people were logical. But the Gray Man was. So he had to consider all the options. One: one of the Lynch boys was illogical, and had used their Greywaren object to take a beak-monster out of his dreams and lock it in the shed. Two: the Greywaren object itself was malfunctioning and creating nightmares instead of regular dreams. Or three: the Greywaren was a person. People didn't have to malfunction to create nightmares. It did help, though.

He had Maura Sargent's phone number and had been intending to call with an invitation for dinner at Henrietta's finest (least unprepossessing) restaurant. Instead he called and asked, "Is the Greywaren a person?"

"Why do you think I know?" Maura asked, in a voice that managed to convey that she absolutely knew.

The Gray Man sighed.

If it was a person, he wouldn't be doing this. It was one thing to kill someone. The Gray Man regarded death as a mostly-natural process, and himself as someone who sometimes helped that along. But Greenmantle wouldn't want the Greywaren dead. He wanted to keep and own it. Which made this tricky if _it_ was a _him_.

"I'm not doing this if it's a person," the Gray Man said.

"Oh," said Maura. She sounded bright, like he'd just revealed that he'd won two tickets to a cruise and had promised her both tickets. She added, "It's definitely a person."

She hung up. The Gray Man stared at the phone in his hand, then dialed Greenmantle.

"Tell me," Greenmantle said, "and make it good news."

"It's not here," said the Gray Man.

"Who got to you?" Greenmantle demanded. "Van Siclen? Cheng? Nogueira?"

"You're picking up an old fault line that runs along the mountains," the Gray Man told him.

But Greenmantle kept listing names. He was making a lattice of his names, and then climbing it until he hit a frenzied state. Or maybe he'd been there already. "Laumonier? Whelk? It was Whelk, wasn't it? Listen, you creepy son of a bitch. You stay right there and wait for me."

Greenmantle hung up. The Gray Man stared at his phone. He hadn't been expecting that reaction. 

In Boston, Colin Greenmantle threw his phone at the wall and said, "Piper, I am thinking of a historic rental. I am thinking of a rural getaway with a historic rental. It will have gingerbread above the door."

He was disappointed by the phone's trajectory. He'd given it a solid, theatrical throw, his hair had even fallen rakishly over one eye as he'd done it, but when it hit the wall it bounced, which ruined the effect. And then one of the servers picked it up and politely passed it back to him.

"Piper!"

Piper looked up from what she was doing on the fifteen-thousand dollar modernist glass coffee table, which seemed to involve sprinkling a lot of sand all over it and saying the word 'chakra' ad nauseam.

"What are you talking about?" she said, annoyed. "Gingerbread?"

Piper handled gingerbread like a bad word, probably because it was composed of a hair color she didn't like and a food she never touched. Next to her, Whelk sat up from his ever-present moody slouch and said, "Were you talking about me?"

"Yes," Colin said, regarding him. He appreciated how all the people at this party who'd been having their own conversations while he'd been talking into the phone now very obviously began to eavesdrop on his conversation. He didn't tend to make his vendettas excessively public, but with Whelk he thought he could enjoy doing that. 

Colin disliked Whelk for four separate reasons. First, Whelk had overlarge features that were not as classically attractive as Colin's. Colin was therefore ninety-nine percent sure that he was better-looking than Whelk, but the remaining one percent was going to bother him.

Second, Whelk had risen to prominence very quickly and was proving very good at keeping hold of his money and influence. Because he was less attractive than Colin and reminded Colin of a squid that had once eyeballed Colin from the inside of a tank, Colin resented that Whelk had anything Colin did not.

Third, impossibly, Piper liked Whelk, because Piper liked tank squids. Piper enjoyed it when they eyeballed her. She liked to tap the glass and then demand that they be boiled alive and served for dinner, preferably after they'd had been cooked in a manner guaranteed to detoxify her system.

Fourth, Colin had been reasonably convinced for about a month that Whelk had the Greywaren. Now, he wasn't so sure. But Whelk had _something_. Whelk had come out of the same cow-infested corner that had produced Niall Lynch, and Whelk had been a _Latin teacher_. Whelk had no right becoming rich again. Colin disliked people whose lives were beautiful sentimental parabolas like that, rich to poor to rich again, like a lifetime movie.

Whelk didn't think anyone knew about his former poverty, but Colin knew, because Colin knew everything.

He crossed to sit on the arm of Piper's oddly-shaped seventeen-thousand dollar chair, stretching out his long legs next to her so that everyone could see what an attractive pair they made. Piper nearly smacked him in the eye with a fistful of sand. He had no idea who was giving her the sand. Colin kept his voice smooth and dangerous anyway because his voice was always smooth and dangerous.

"I'm afraid you and I are after the same thing, Barrington. Why not combine forces? Ludemus bene in compania, after all."

"I hate Latin," Whelk said.

Colin's eye twitched. Here was a fifth reason to hate Whelk: Whelk could never be counted on to give the dramatic response. He was so sane and plain about his answers that Colin found him boring, and Colin forgave nothing that he found boring. 

"What are you talking about?" Piper said suddenly, accusingly. She was still flinging sand around. She got it on everyone but herself. She got it in Whelk's drink and he nearly dropped it down the front of his shirt. "Are you still talking about gingerbread?"

"I'm talking about a country sojourm," Colin said in tones of dignity. Colin was the kind of person who could deploy tones of dignity even when he probably had sand caught in his eyebrows, and he took a moment to appreciate himself for it.

"I'm talking," he said now, "about a little town called Henrietta. I'm talking about what would happen if someone discovered the secrets that lie there."

Whelk blanched. Colin savored his discomfort.

"Sounds boring," Piper said.

"Oh, it's not," Colin said. "Why, if you and I and Barrington went, I'm sure Barrington could show us a thing or two."

Barrington Whelk did not say no. Colin, a master of reading lesser men, watched him consider the possibility of letting the Greenmantles go alone and reject it utterly. He would come along to keep them from finding out more than they needed to about his past. He would think he was in charge. 

But once he was there he, like anyone else, would dance on Colin's strings.

Piper said, "I can't until Wednesday. Tomorrow I'm doing an herbal cleansing."

"Are you free Wednesday, Barrington?" Colin asked.

Whelk's face did a complicated thing like he was trying to show several emotions at once and could get the hang of none of them. Something in Colin was repulsed by this.

"I could be free," Whelk managed.

"Oh my god, compare your calendars later," said Piper. 

In an attempt to wow the other partygoers with her chakra balancing or whatever it was she was doing, she sprayed sand all over the front of Colin's jacket.


	10. Chapter 10

They agreed to meet Jesse again at the end of the week, on Saturday. Adam had no work that day, and neither did Gansey and Blue. Ronan, of course, had no work that day or any other. 

"You'll come Saturday?" Gansey asked him when they arrived at the subdivision.

Ronan gave no answer. His smile was brittle. He climbed out of the Camaro, his bird tucked into the bend of his arm, safe and heavy as a weapon. 

"We do shit on Saturday," was all he said. 

_We_ , but not _you_. Saturday was Kavinsky's day; it was a day to stop working and start exploring substances. Gansey raised a hand quizzically to his lip. He didn't understand this.

Adam did. Adam understood a few other things, too. 

"Why are you even living with him?" he asked.

He knew the answer. It was in the relieved glances Mrs. Ramirez shot him and Gansey, even though she suspected they were closer than they should be. It was in the easy way the Father spoke of the Lynch boys, too wild for St. Agnes and yet absolutely welcome to it, reared in the church, belonging to it, because it belonged to them. 

He didn't think Ronan was lying when he said he couldn't go home. He didn't think Ronan was ever meant to live in a place like the subdivision. He knew where Ronan should have gone instead. Knowing it made Adam feel like he'd swallowed a doorknob.

"Why can't you live at home?" he asked Ronan.

"Did I not tell you?" Ronan said. "Must have been none of your business then."

Blue started, as if she wanted to say something, but Adam shook his head slightly, hoping she caught it. She did. He wanted to say something, too, something like, _your mother can't really live alone there, can she?_ but he didn't say that.

Gansey spoke up. "We're here to help, Ronan. If you want it."

But there were no chances in Ronan's snarl. He turned away and was gone.

"Why does he hang out with Kavinsky?" Blue demanded, as Gansey turned the Camaro around in the direction of Fox Way. "He's not so bad that he can't get better friends."

Gansey made a concerned hum in the back of his throat, like he agreed. In the dark his glasses were mirrors, revealing nothing of his eyes, but the rest of him radiated something that Adam would have taken for regal control a month ago. Now he knew it was anxiety.

"As far as I know all the Lynch boys have always lived on campus," Gansey said, once they were on the highway, "and now one of them doesn't. Still, you'd think they'd have some place else to go." Then he shook his head, like he was remembering what Adam had told him about Ronan's father. 

"I guess they'd have a good reason not to want to return to the family home," he said.

But Adam had been to the Barns. He couldn't even begin to understand not wanting to live there. 

They left Blue at Fox Way and drove home to eat leftovers pressed on Gansey by Boyd's adoring wife. They ate in exhausted, companionable silence the way they usually did, and normally this was enough for Adam. He'd never thought he could have silence that wasn't threaded through with listening for his father's footsteps, with trying to calculate his mother's level of irritation. But now he had Gansey skin to skin, warm, handsome, exquisitely alive. After eating they took a shower together. The water was cold but Adam didn't care. Gansey offered to wash his back and hair, bumped hips with him afterwards when they brushed their teeth, kissed along his collarbone when they climbed into bed. On any other night Adam would have turned to him, pushed up his glasses, and asked, "Gansey, can we?" He would have bitten down the urge to ask Gansey what it was like, being the sun.

But tonight different words lodged in his throat. 

"You know what it means if it's true that he can't go home, right?" Adam said.

Gansey squinted at his book, something very medieval that he'd found in the public library. His glasses were sliding down his nose. Sighing, Adam pushed them up with a finger. 

"Tell me what it means," Gansey said.

"Gansey, he gave us this apartment. Right away, too. He knew it was available. He must have been planning to come here."

Gansey rubbed his chin, rueful. Adam waited to hear his outrage, but it didn't come.

"You're not upset?"

"There's nothing we can do about it right now," Gansey said.

"So you just want to accept this from him?"

"You sound like you think he did something wrong."

"He did!"

The words were vehement and surprising, out before Adam had a chance to think them though. He didn't want to owe this. He didn't like thinking about what it meant that Ronan was giving these things not just to him but to Gansey, that Ronan spilled his secrets to Gansey, that Ronan had suggested Gansey move in. And despite this, he didn't want Ronan tangling with Kavinsky, either. Combined, his reactions teetered on the edge of some unnameable anger. Adam tried to push back from it.

"He's allowed to help us, Parrish," Gansey said now. "I don't want him with Kavinsky either, but you helped me, didn't you? Why can't he help us?"

It wasn't the same. Adam had never asked for this. He knew objectively that he was skewed, that it made no sense to tally the others up the way he did, to feel secure only when he knew they couldn't say he was getting more than he gave. But that was the way he felt. Gifts came with strings. The only surprise was that it wasn't Adam who suffered for this, but Ronan.

"So he's out of school and out of a place to stay," Adam argued, not even sure who he was arguing with. It made things worse that this was Gansey here with him. Gansey never descended into anger. "He's out on two counts, and we get an apartment, we get to go back in the fall--"

Gansey grimaced.

It was the wrong expression for him to wear. It cut Adam off more effectively than any reasonable rebuttal could have. There was always a second, more elusive Gansey hiding behind the Gansey they often saw: internal, private, anxious. For a moment, that had been the only Gansey there was.

"You're going back in the fall," Gansey said.

"That's what I said."

"No, Parrish. _You're_ going back."

Adam stared at him. He was suggesting the inconceivable. Aglionby couldn't dismiss Gansey. He was Gansey. Even without his money, he only had to speak to make the earth shift into place.

Now he spoke very evenly. "They have a limited pool for financial aid. That's all. Don't make it something it's not."

But it hit Adam hard. He felt unbalanced, remote for a second and then hot everywhere. He reacted without thinking, slamming his hand into the night table and lurching up, colliding with Gansey's buildings and not caring. The library, the bank, the local pharmacy all crumpled uselessly.

"Parrish!"

Gansey's voice was a powerful thing, but that was the wrong thing. Adam didn't want power. He found his work clothes in a corner and pulled them on. He needed to get out. He wouldn't do this, he wouldn't switch into rage. It took everything to make it to the door and down the stairs.

"I have work," Adam managed, as he left. 

Gansey was after him in nothing but his underwear and socks. "At three in the morning. It's eleven right now."

He reached for Adam's shoulder. His fingers were warm and controlling. They dropped Adam off the precipice, his fury instant and overpowering. He shoved and they slid off and only a small part of his mind was horrified at what he was doing -- this was _Gansey_. This was the sun, and Adam was only his father's son now. Uncontrollable, mercurial, muddy with rage. He didn't want Gansey to follow him.

At the door to the parking lot he said, "You're not wearing any clothes." 

Gansey flushed, stymied by his breeding and his decorum and all those things that even now separated him from Adam. Then Adam pushed the door open and was out in the night. He reached for his bike and though he couldn't remember untying it he knew the bike was going far enough down side streets and alleys, far enough that he thought Gansey wouldn't catch up even in the Camaro.

Eventually he stopped pedaling. His heart pounded in the fragile cage of his body. It didn't feel like his own. He didn't know where he was. It all looked like Henrietta: squat, meager buildings. Some would wake in the day and some were abandoned. At this hour they blurred together. Boarded windows, far too many darkened doorways, rotting porches broken by weeds and reeking of urine. In the dark places between the buildings his anger bred, and Adam retreated to a colorless place where he couldn't feel it. His body walked the bike from streetlight to streetlight, each casting an impersonal, planetary halo that broke the night.

Feeling started to come back somewhere near the tenth streetlight. He felt like he had stepped into a life he wasn't supposed to have. Adam felt the pressure of being an imposter, a pressure that Aglionby had introduced him to, sneaking in around the edges of his vision. Ronan could not go home and was living with Kavinsky. Gansey, too, was exiled from his former life. Noah was dead, and his murderer had the ley line and Glendower. Even Blue was shortchanged, forced to share Gansey with him. 

Only Adam's life was improving, had improved. And Adam couldn't seem to want it properly. Thoughts of his mother and the trailer pressed in on him crookedly.

He was walking in the direction of Fox Way without realizing it. A part of him wanted to speak to Blue, like if she only agreed to want him as badly as she wanted Gansey then things could be alright. But he knew better than that. He broke the thought off. He found himself walking through the scraggly trees between the two main roads, less a proper grove than a playground of rusting cars. 

When he reached the second road, someone said, "Adam."

Persephone was waiting at the bus stop, her hair its own lantern beneath the streetlight. Even from here, Adam could hear the St. Agnes bells chime twelve times. It was midnight.

"Sit," Persephone said. The word was small, but it cut through the bells. Adam sat. 

"Blue's awake. Were you going to meet her?" Persephone asked. Adam shook his head. 

"Are you hungry?" Persephone asked.

It snapped him back to his body a little. He was, and ravenously so. He found himself rubbing at the edges of his fingers, where the skin was roughest. He'd learned that sensations like this couldn't get rid of hunger, but they could distract him from it.

"Here, Adam," Persephone said.

She was unwrapping something, unspooling colorless cling wrap like a cobweb. It was a pie in a throwaway aluminum tin, and he thought maybe she was taking it to somebody, like you would on a visit; and the only odd thing about this was that it was the middle of the night. Adam found himself accepting a piece and eating it with his hands. The crust crumbled over his coveralls and another part of him snapped back, still just a little.

When he looked up, the night was big and disordered, with a bough of stars hung across Henrietta. Persephone said, "What you're feeling is all the things that have gone unskewed."

He knew that already. He said, "Was it Whelk?"

It felt like it had been Whelk. That was the worst thing: the way Gansey believed so much in magic, the way Blue and Ronan _were_ magic, and yet the magic had all been traded away. It didn't affect Adam, not really. Adam was not magical. But he still hated this all. Before he'd met Gansey, he'd thought the worst thing in the world was knowing he was not secure, not in money, not in family, not in home. Now he knew that the worst thing was not that at all. The worst thing would be losing the sense that things could be different and better. This was not better. But Adam didn't know how to fix it.

Persephone pressed another piece of pie on him.

As he ate, she said, "It came before him, probably. But he didn't help. He must have sacrificed something."

They'd said this before, her and Calla. Adam looked at her. She tilted her head at him, the gesture curious, like he puzzled her.

"You said a greater sacrifice could--" Adam struggled to remember, "--could take the trees back. Or something."

"Ley lines like sacrifice and reciprocity," Persephone said. "If you give, they give. It's like a mirror. They need something in front, so that they can reflect something back."

"And he killed somebody, and got everything reflected back," Adam said bitterly.

"No," Persephone said. "No. I think it was worse than that. He'd already killed somebody, hadn't he? So he wasn't giving up anything new."

Her voice was tiny and secretive, like she was pulling back a veil and showing Adam what was underneath.

"What did he give up, then?" Adam said. He couldn't imagine what Whelk might have sacrificed. He didn't think Whelk knew what sacrifice was. He said as much.

"Do you know what sacrifice is?" Persephone asked.

Adam nodded tightly. It was working without stop, without seeing the benefit. It was sitting in class reduced to nothing more than the tear in his sweater. It was knowing he could never give in to the missing, it was knowing nothing more than exhaustion.

"Then you know it won't be easy," Persephone said. Adam looked up at her, but the moment was broken by the dull exhaust sounds of the bus arriving. It stopped before them, lowering itself to meet her.

"You have to mean the sacrifice, Adam," Persephone said. "So it helps to know what it means."

She stepped on, and was gone.

-

Because Adam had always had less than he had, Gansey did not mention the fight. He rebuilt his buildings in silence. It was easy to be hurt by cheap slights, but ignoble to let the hurt control you, so Gansey didn't. But for the rest of the week Adam made himself a scarce presence around the edges of the apartment, as though Gansey had made something of it. Because of this, Gansey found his hurt lapping at the shores, coloring everything uglier than it should be.

"You've been out so often I don't think you've slept at all," he told Adam on Wednesday.

"I have work, Gansey," Adam said, not meeting his eyes.

But usually his work left him time to come help at Nino's, or ended with enough hours in the day to find him at Fox Way. It didn't tire him so much that he retreated across the bed. It still gave Gansey his careful, attentive friend, running his hands down Gansey's back on the nights Gansey couldn't sleep, pliable enough in the mornings to let Gansey hoist up one slim thigh and lick along his ass and kiss the crevices of his hips, wrap his mouth around Adam's dick.

It was terrible to be shut out now, to know a line had been crossed and to be unable to bring Adam back after Adam had crossed it.

On Friday, something malfunctioned in the Nino's ovens, spewing a cloud of smoke over the whole kitchen that escaped out onto the restaurant floor. Coughing, Gansey emerged from it and found Blue calming the only pair of customers there. He wanted to take her in his arms and draw her away from the smoke but the smoke thwarted him; it was enough to destroy the kitchen, but not enough to reach Blue over by the booths. He went to her anyway and helped pack up some of the buffet for her customers. Then Donny screamed several choice things to Laurence and the rest of the kitchen staff. Then Donny sent everyone home.

Gansey knew he should worry about the lost wages. He couldn't. Instead, he said, "Let's go look at that cave, Jane."

"Today?" Blue asked. 

Gansey already had his phone out. He texted Ronan. Ronan had said that tomorrow was Saturday and a day for Ronan to ruin himself, but he hadn't said anything about today. Today they could catch hold of him. That seemed important.  
He showed Blue the text message as he sent it.

"What if he doesn't show?" Blue asked. She looked upset by the thought, as though she, too, liked Ronan.

"Then he doesn't," Gansey said. "We've given him the invitation, at least."

It was frustrating to have Ronan so beyond his control, frustrating in the same way Adam's black anger and frightening remoteness were frustrating. But Gansey wouldn't force his way with Ronan. He could offer Ronan assistance, he could offer Ronan friendship, but he couldn't force Ronan to take it. Gansey didn't want friendships that weren't true and freely-given. He'd had paper friendships before. This unshakable kind he was learning about now -- this was better.

Ronan's reply came in just as Gansey pulled the Camaro into the St. Agnes parking lot.

 _I'll be there_.

He showed this to Blue. Their eyes met, heavy with some relief they couldn't name. Blue's relief was curious and compassionate, just like she was. Gansey's was purposeful. He slipped the phone into his pocket and left Blue in the Camaro to wait, then climbed the stairs to their apartment, quiet as he made his way inside. Adam was curled into himself on the bed and Gansey sat down next to him, gently shaking him awake. 

The touch made Adam stiffen and curl in more, protecting what he could. Gansey switched to running a hand through his hair until he calmed. He tried to think of what to say. He hated that they'd fought. 

"Ronan can come with us today, so Jane and I thought we'd head to the cave."

"I thought you had work."

"The ovens exploded. It was a zoo."

Now Adam uncurled enough for Gansey to see him. He didn't look like he believed it.

"I'm serious," Gansey protested. 

"Is Blue okay?"

"She's still wonderful. I might have a five o'clock shadow made of smoke smudges."

"That's wishful thinking," Adam told him. But he sat up and he didn't lean away from Gansey. For the second time that morning, Gansey felt relieved.

"So you'll come?" 

Adam shrugged. "I don't have work until later."

Neither of them mentioned that this was because he'd been trading shifts to keep him away from the apartment while Gansey was here. Gansey watched him pull on his clothing and hoped that they'd seen the last of this kind of thing.

"You've been working yourself past thinking, Parrish," he told Adam now. "You should sleep in the backseat on the way."

Adam followed this advice only after fistbumping Blue and planting a kiss on her shoulder, leaving Gansey sad he hadn't thought to do the same this morning. He started the car again. His clothes smelled like burnt pizza, but the morning contained some elusive sense of victory. When they stopped at a gas station he pulled Blue in close and kissed the back of her head, let her tap her fingers along his forearm as she paid for snacks and water and three flashlights and several packs of batteries.

"I'll cover a third of the cost and so will Adam," he told her when they were back in the car, mostly to show that he understood the unspoken rules about this kind of thing. He tried to resist sneaking glances at her in the rearview to see if she was impressed. She met his gaze coolly. Her hand snuck across and tapped up the inside of his thigh.

"Now, Jane?" he asked, delighted.

Blue shrugged. "Maybe later."

He considered this and decided that Ronan might leave if they made him wait. And it would be better if they had Adam awake for this. And Gansey didn't feel as though he'd earned anything yet. This was one of those pleasant summer mornings that cast its thoughts back to spring, all relief and green promise. But Jesse Dittley's cave still awaited, and in it a curse that was somehow connected to Blue, to Blue's absent father, to her dead aunt and to that woman's killer.

Gansey captured her hand and brought it to his lips, careful to kiss it just where Adam had, as though by this he could kiss her and touch some faint echo of Adam at the same time. 

"After the cave," he promised. She nodded, like she would hold him to that promise.

"Jesse said it was steep in there," she added, peering down at his top siders. "Maybe you should ask him for his boots again."

Gansey thought she just wanted to trick him out of his shoes. Blue had a special disdain for his shoes. And either way, they didn't find Jesse anywhere near his house but instead out back, by a ruined tower, talking about cows with Ronan Lynch. Gansey was surprised; he hadn't seen the BMW out front. When he asked about this, Ronan gave him an irritated flick of his lashes, apparently annoyed to be interrupted when he was discussing cows, and gestured carelessly at a nearby copse of trees. The BMW lurked just beyond it, nearly hidden. It had hunted out a grassy path between the pastures that had been indetectable to Gansey. 

"I got us a light," Ronan said, midway between remarks on Herefords. 

Both Blue and Adam were looking down at it, a large soft-glowing lantern in the grass at Ronan's feet, tucked next to an expensive athletic bag. Ronan's bird hopped around on it imperiously, and kerah-ed at Gansey when he looked at her too long. 

"Mind your language," Ronan told her, abandoning what sounded like a very complicated opinion about Jersey cattle.

"DON'T KNOW IF ALL OF YOU ARE DRESSED TO GO IN," Jesse said now. He squinted at Gansey's smoke-stained polo and whale-printed shorts.

"I wasn't aware there was a dress code," Gansey said.

"THE CURSE DOESN'T NEED YOU TO LOOK FANCY IS ALL."

"I thought my face was fancy. If my face is fancy, there's really nothing I can do about it."

Jesse sighed. "THAT'S TRUE." 

He seemed to view this as a failing in Gansey, but otherwise made no complaints. After praising Blue for sensibly bringing along water and food, he led them to the mouth of his tower.

"I'M AWFUL GLAD THERE ARE FOUR OF YOU, AT LEAST," he told them. "AND THAT THE CURSE ONLY KILLS DITTLEYS."

Gansey was also glad of this, but he tried to look more sympathetic than reassured about it. As they went in, Adam asked, "Are you really bringing that bird into a cave?"

"Yes, Parrish," Ronan said, hoisting up his lantern and his bag. "I believe I am."

Somehow, despite the bird, Ronan ended up in front. His lantern was a ghost light, sad and spooky, but it rendered the flashlights unnecessary. Gansey switched his off. He'd dreamt about going underground to find Glendower but now that Glendower had been found he would take this, though it was narrow and dank, a rabbit hole clawed into the earth and winding steeply ever-downward. Ronan swung his ghost light and created terrible poltergeists of light and shadow.

"Stop," Blue protested.

"Seriously," Adam said.

Ronan stopped swinging the light. They kept walking.

"Okay, she told you to stop," Adam said.

They all stared at him. Adam pressed a hand to his deaf ear.

"I thought I heard--"

Three gunshots. They rang out from behind them, unmistakable. Gansey was frozen for a moment. They all were. Then he reacted, shifting Blue away from the sound and in front of him. 

"Come on," he said.

"No--" Adam protested, but he was outvoted. Ronan said, sneering, "Parrish, come _on_. You can stay if you're scared," and somehow this was enough -- Adam was running down the tunnel with the rest of them. Blue seemed to want to go back but Gansey had her arm. He understood that Jesse was up there with the gunshots. He simply didn't want Blue to be. Somehow, she seemed to get the message. He was able to pull her along just as Ronan was prodding Adam.

It was a steep, skidding journey. Ronan's ghost light bobbed in earnest now and carved new shadows into the stone walls. His bird left his shoulder and took flight down the cave and he called after her, but the response was not a bird but the singing voice of a woman, trilling, spouting nonsense. Gansey skidded to a stop and almost knocked into Adam. His breath came short, terrified. His testicles retreated.

"Right," Adam said now, panting. He had a hand on the dripping cave wall. "Exactly."

"It's fucking with us," Ronan said immediately. 

Blue agreed. 

"We don't know what that is," she said slowly. "But those, up there, those were definitely gunshots."

And now if Gansey strained his ears he could hear something else coming from the winding tunnel above them. Footsteps. Speech. Living beings, wrong for the rabbit hole. Certainly more solid and threatening than the disembodied song of the curse.

They kept going down. At the bottom they ran into Chainsaw the bird, clicking her beak at a dead end. No, not a dead end. A stone door. Gansey made out the effigies in the light: a stone knight, two ravens. Glendower's shield on the knight's arm. He felt a thrill run through him, but there was no time to stop and admire it. The footsteps came closer and soon they'd be close enough to run into the edges of the ghost light. Ronan hefted his shoulder against the door, shoving at it, but Adam ran a finger along the edge and shook his head.

"Wedged shut," he reported in a low voice. "We could get it open with a kick, but they'd hear us."

In response, Ronan dropped his bag and unzipped it. Gansey caught a glimpse of what could only be deemed junk: a corn cob with pearls inside, what looked like the remains of a radio. Ronan passed this over and selected a short-handled, wicked looking knife. He gave this to Blue, who was nearest to the wall.

"Cut," he told her, and pointed at the stone behind her.

Blue squinted at him, puzzled, but cut. The wall gave, peeling away like a new door. She cut deeper. After Ronan had secured his bird and picked up his bag and lantern he took the knife from her and arced it up above her head, then dug it in. When he was done, the result was an alcove big enough to fit the four of them, and he pushed Blue inside. Gansey blinked, trying to understand where some of the stone had gone, how the dream-knife _worked_ , but found himself just as easily manhandled. Adam came in after him, and Gansey caught a glimpse of his eyes, wide and spooked, before Ronan followed him into the alcove and dragged some of the peeled-away stone in front of them to block them from view. When this was done, he blew out the ghost light.

They were in perfect blackness for several minutes. Then they heard the voices echoing along in the damp. Real voices. Lights began to play on the stone door from further along the tunnel. Something shifted next to Gansey's hand -- Ronan's bird, it felt like, and by one swinging, faint flashlight beam Gansey saw him scoop her up and hold her cupped with both hands, pressing his mouth to her feathers to quiet her.

Then the cave was full of talk and sound. Gansey couldn't see the visitors head-on. Adam's head was in the way, and Ronan's, and the mass of stone that hid them all from view. Gansey only caught a glimpse of an unimpressed blonde woman.

She was very attractive. She had an expensive-looking and purposeful-looking flashlight and an expensive-looking and purposeful-looking gun, and she had several large men trailing in behind her who were all purposeful-looking if not expensive-looking. 

Her voice rang out above all the others.

"I think this cave is full of bad energy. Like, first of all, this door is tacky. And second of all, ravens are bad energy because they're carrion birds."

She didn't say any of this like it upset her. She didn't say it like it surprised her. She said it like she wanted to, possibly, spend eight hundred dollars on a cleansing performed by a medium, the kind that had their own TV shows. She said it like she was contemplating moving into the cave and making it her own.

"Who cares?" someone else said, male and rich-voiced and maybe a little bit of a whiner. "I don't want to be here. I don't do spelunking."

The other men began to talk all over each other. Again, the woman's voice cut through the din. She spoke in a register all her own, uncaring and warlike and used to getting her way.

"Do you hear that?"

Gansey didn't know how anyone could hear anything. To go by sound alone, there were easily fifteen people in that cave.

"The sound of my minions?" said the man. Someone huffed. 

"Yes, Morris, my minions," the man said.

The woman said, "Are you trying to demonstrate that you have the biggest penis in this cave? No one cares if they're your minions, Colin--"

"They are my--"

"Whatever. Did you just throw your gum in the corner?"

"It's a _cave_ \--"

"Colin, you're part of the problem--"

"Maybe we should get that door open," a third voice said.

Next to Gansey, Adam stiffened and Ronan had nearly lunged, but they restrained him. The space was so tight that elbows and legs inevitably collided with Blue, who Gansey felt more than saw as she flattened herself against the wall, presumably annoyed but far too sensible to make a sound. Gansey didn't want to reveal their presence, either. So he couldn't explain about the third voice. He couldn't say:

_That's him. That's Barrington Whelk._

And as soon as Whelk had spoken, the men in the cave had begun to move, throwing their weight against the door with heavy thuds.

"What are you doing?" said the other man, not Whelk. Now he was almost certainly whining. "Don't listen to him! You're my--"

"Typical. You're such a wuss," said the woman. "It's always: 'let's get a house with gingerbread. Let's go to Virginia on a whim. Let's go artifact-hunting.' But then when we're here you don't even want to do it."

"I have people to do this for me," snapped the man. "I didn't even want to be here!"

"Oh my god, go back then," said the woman.

There was a shattering sound: the door giving way.

"After you," said Barrington Whelk. The halo of blonde that was obscuring Gansey's vision shifted and vanished. Gansey saw dark shapes sliced by flashlight beams, all moving in the direction of the door, but no matter how much he squinted he couldn't make Whelk out. Ronan was tense next to him. Adam still held him back with one slim hand that was caught briefly by a passing light. Blue was breathing hard against Gansey's back. There was the sound of rock scraping, low discussion, the other man -- Colin -- cursing under his breath.

There was more singing. 

It was still nonsense. _Blue Lily. Lily Blue. What is my name? Sorrow, father. Sorrow is my name._ Gansey thought they must have loosed the curse and that it was a song, but then the flashlight beams returned. His field of vision was dominated by an enormous quantity of hair. It was laughing, hysterical and high.

"What the fuck?" Colin was saying. "What the _fuck_?"

"I told you," said the blonde woman. "This cave has so. Much. Bad energy."

But by now the hair was leaping, dodging meaty hands and swinging flashlights and ricocheting bullets. Gansey grabbed Adam and Ronan both and pulled them in, instinctive, his heart pounding. The hair was not just hair but a wild, tall woman, though Gansey only saw her in fragments.

"Watch me, prince!" she shrieked. "See how they attack, for I am a witch! I am a monster with a trap in my womb! I am --"

"Who's she talking to?" demanded the blonde woman, still unimpressed.

The meaty, anonymous minions managed to tackle the tall woman. She did not tackle easily. Gansey caught only her smile: shattered, insane, wide and knowing.

"Ask me, father! I'll tell only my father!"

"Why did we come in here?" Colin asked. He sounded miserable. He sounded genuinely puzzled. He added, "What does she do? Is she a witch? I hate witches. They don't keep well in formaldehyde."

"You wanted a Henrietta secret, Colin," Whelk said, very reasonable. For some reason Gansey had expected him to sound less rational and more murderous. But his voice came out entirely sane, entirely believable, wrapping itself around his words and lending them a credibility Gansey couldn't understand and yet could not reject.

"This is Gwenllian," Whelk said. "She is my daughter. And now that I have her, Colin, I'm leaving."

-

They couldn't leave the cave until Whelk and his people left, and by then the daylight was withered and brittle. It wasn't dusk yet, but the blinding late afternoon had passed.

Jesse Dittley lay stretched outside the cave with three black holes in his chest and head. It was a cleaner body than another one Ronan had found around this time of year, but his hands still shook so violently that he dropped the lantern. Chainsaw took off, screeching. Ronan let her go and wished he could follow.

The look on Blue's face was worse than the corpse. Ronan turned away. Gansey and Adam didn't. 

"We'll call the police," Gansey said. His voice was veneered in control. 

Adam's hand closed supportively on Blue's elbow, but he said, "We have to stop Whelk, too. We can't let him leave. He has the ley line and the forest and--"

"Forget that," Gansey said immediately. "He killed people. Are you seeing this?"

"Any one of the people with guns could have done this," Adam said. "But it means something, that he's involved. He took Cabeswater. He took the ley line. He took Glendower -- your Glendower--"

"Glendower is gone," Gansey said. "You don't know me at all if you think I would rather chase Glendower than keep all of you safe."

There was silence. It stretched in the space between the four of them.

"If Whelk goes, there goes our best chance of stopping him," Adam said. "We have to act now. Persephone said a sacrifice could take the line from him--"

"Noah was _already_ a sacrifice," Gansey said. "This man right here is a sacrifice. We've sacrificed enough. And he has the power of Glendower, Parrish."

"So let's take it back," Adam said. 

Gansey shook his head. "No. That woman in the cave--" He broke off. When he spoke, there was something truthful and anxious in it, blowing away his veneer of control.

"I'm giving that up. Glendower and power. If I had it, I wouldn't need it. I'd give it to you, give it to Jane--" he pulled Blue in closer, but Adam ducked away. Gansey winced, but Ronan understood. 

Power wasn't much of a gift, and Gansey should know that by now.

"I'm getting out of here," Ronan said, hefting up his bag of faulty dreams. The losses were mounting faster than his thoughts. He didn't know why he'd come; he had enough to worry about on his own.

"What -- now?" Gansey demanded. "Just like that?"

"You two have a lot to say but not a lot to contribute."

Adam colored a furious red, but Gansey just looked regal and disappointed in him, control slipping back on as soon as Ronan proved himself unreliable.

But Blue said, "He's right. Are we going to call the police or are you going two going to keep arguing?"

Ronan still didn't want to see the look on her face, but he chanced it then. She was still crying, but it was like the tears themselves were irrelevant. She was focused on Jesse.

"We have to call his family," she said. "We have to tell them the curse took him--"

"Whelk took him," Gansey said, making it a reasonable reminder to Adam.

"I don't care about that right now," Blue said. Her tear tracks were looking less like tear tracks by the minute. "I'm going to call Jesse's family and the police. Then we can figure out the rest of it."

She had this well in hand. Ronan turned away to go back to his car. He heard Adam say something to the others. Ronan couldn't make it out. Adam was losing control of his vowels. 

He caught up with Ronan by the BMW. The trees pulled at his dusty hair. Adam shrugged them off.

"Can I come?" he said. "They know I have work tonight. They'll handle the police. Gansey'll be better at that anyway."

Without waiting for Ronan to say yes, he let himself into the car. 

"Help your fucking self," Ronan said, and didn't kick him out. He threw his dreams in the back and got into the driver's seat. The BMW roared awake and cut along the path between the grass, refusing to trample the main pasture. 

Something huge and terrible ate at the corners of Ronan's vision. He still didn't know why he'd come today. He thought about K and the time of year and bodies in the grass, and anything he could say to explain it all rattled behind the prison of his teeth, caged there. Ronan wasn't good with words. Ronan didn't want to be the one to ask for help. Especially not now.

"Can you take me to Cabeswater?" Adam asked.

Ronan glanced at him in the rearview. Adam wasn't supposed to ask for help, either. This wasn't who Adam was. Adam only ever looked to Ronan when Ronan was in the process of passing Boyd a fifty for work already completed.

"Why?" Ronan asked.

The skin beneath Adam's eyes was grey-blue with exhaustion, but everything else about him was reckless and true. Ronan hungered for this Adam, the one who was no angel. Ronan didn't care that he wasn't. This was better than a dream. This was ugly and very true.

"If Whelk keeps the line, keeps Cabeswater, then that's one more thing he has and we don't," Adam said. "Right? He has everything right now. He's the bad guy, and he won."

"And you want to what?" Ronan scoffed. "Take everything from him?"

"I can," Adam said simply. "Or at least I can take part of it."

Because his hands were being battered by the BMW's jet-propelled air conditioning, he cupped one around the other like he was holding a lit cigarette or a promise or something about to ignite. Ronan watched his boyish fingers until he had to avoid swerving the car off of the road. He wondered if Gansey knew about this Adam, or if he just pretended this Adam didn't exist. He wondered if Adam knew about this Adam, and then decided he didn't care. 

"You're not using me to go against Gansey," Ronan said.

Red bloomed along Adam's neck and ears.

"Fine," he said. 

Ronan let him stew. Adam wouldn't be using him because Ronan was choosing this, choosing to take him to Cabeswater. Ronan had chosen that in the beginning. He'd wanted things to change. Maybe things were finally changing. Ronan needed them to.

Adam noticed when he didn't take the turn-off to St. Agnes. He sat up. 

"I'll go in alone," he said. "You won't have to get involved."

"I am involved," Ronan said. Cabeswater didn't feel like it belonged to him these days, but it had his tooth marks all over it. 

He hoped it would be there. 

It was. Ronan's feelings swung like a pendulum, hitting relief with a clatter. It made for a baffling polarity. Just this morning he had wondered if it was worth it keeping his promise to Matthew.

"What's in that tree?" Adam asked, when they were out of the car and picking thir way along the roots. He didn't have to say which tree. Ronan knew.

"You're not going in there," he said.

Adam nodded, like he would respect this. But it was a stopgap thing. Adam wasn't K, and respected boundaries, but Ronan had a sense that the boundaries would shift soon. It was thrilling and terrifying, his heart in his throat, the sense of momentum building. 

"Parrish?" he asked. "What are you going to do?"

Adam stopped and put his hand on the trunk of a birch tree, looking up into its branches for one quiet moment. His other hand hung limp at his side. He seemed hungry and desolate.

"I don't know," he admitted. Ronan frowned. 

"But," Adam said. "I'm going to find out."

That was the Adam Parrish Ronan knew, the one he watched from the other side of the Latin classroom. He nodded.

"I think we need a place," Adam said. "A safe place." He said _safe_ like a question, like he wasn't sure he was asking for something that really existed. He added, "I don't know if that makes any sense, but just a place I can talk to the trees--"

"You can talk to them pretty much anywhere here."

"No," Adam said, shaking his head. ""I -- you know more about this than me. Is there any place here that feels like your house? Like you can call it home."

Wild rage knocked into Ronan's heart.

"My home is my home," he snarled. "That's it."

Adam closed his eyes.

"I'll find it on my own, then," he said after a minute.

Ronan watched him walk off and felt furious and well-matched. 

"Come on," he said, stalking ahead.

He found himself leading Adam someplace, even if he wasn't yet sure which place it would be. He considered the Mustang and abandoned the thought. He went past the mud-brown summer version of the stream, precarious with rushing water, and discarded this too. The wintry tree he'd first shown Adam reminded him of holidays at the Barns, but he didn't want to expose himself through a facsimile. That wouldn't be good enough. 

They settled on Noah's grave. Adam kneeled behind the grave and let his hands rest on the trunk of the closest tree, then frowned, like that wasn't right. Ronan leaned against the gravestone and looked down at him.

"I feel like we should have something more," Adam said. "Right? Candles or something? One of those stars they have on tarot cards?"

"A pentagram?" Ronan scoffed.

"You wouldn't use that?"

"It's a game to people who use that stuff," Ronan said, knowing Adam would take it as an insult against Fox Way. 

He added, "I never use that shit."

He didn't need to. He didn't have to invoke magic; he was magic. It was a thing living inside his body, staring back at him, never to be touched. It was truth. It was in the skin. And if Adam didn't get that magic was like that, then Ronan wasn't sure he'd ever be able to use it. 

After a second, Adam removed his hand from the tree and dug his fingers into the earth instead. He closed his eyes.

"Alright," he said softly. "Well, I don't know what we need to use. But I know that to get the line back, we need to sacrifice something. Something bigger than what Whelk gave it."

Ronan felt his skin prickle. 

"Parrish, don't--"

But it was too late. Adam was crouching over himself, whispering to the earth. Ronan thought of his father cracking the earth open with his birth, of cattle weeping blood. He thought of his mother, sacrificed to her creation. Ronan had sacrificed his abilities, his forest, his mind. But Ronan had a lot. What did a summer-brown boy from Henrietta have to sacrifice?

He saw Adam whisper, _I sacrifice myself_. Ronan lunged to stop him. The earth rippled, Noah's gravestone and the willows supple as water. All of the sound was sucked out of the clearing only to come rushing back too fast, too loud, like a train jumping tracks under the control of a mad engineer.

Ronan landed on his back next to Adam, the wind knocked out of him, and the earth kept shaking. Four point one. The forest shifted and groaned around them.

"What are you doing?" Ronan said wildly. "Look what you've done, you crazy bastard!" 

Now the trees were whispering. The world was tilting and then it slowed, and the sound mutated. This was no train but many legs snapping off the underbrush, moving quickly, a massive stampede. Ronan pulled Adam into him and dragged them behind the gravestone. 

But nothing touched them. Ronan felt the rush of the animals all around him, saw hectic sinews and pressed bodies, ice-white coats, an unstoppable herd. It was strange and snorting and capable of trampling a person to death, but it parted around them and kept going. Adam lifted his head blankly and touched his dirty fingers to Ronan's chest. He pushed himself off, carefully, and stood looking at the animals until the last of them were gone.

"It's done," he said. "Whelk doesn't have the line anymore."

He was elegant and remote when he looked at Ronan. 

"Does it help you?" Adam asked, low. "If we have it? If we have Cabeswater? Why did you want us to help the trees so badly?"

Ronan barely heard the question. It was a bargain, Ronan's mind told him. Adam had made a bargain. A deal. Like the one he'd made with Ronan before, except that this was with something wilder and greater and less reasonable, and Ronan's fury over this was unmatched.

He felt like he'd walked into a punch. Adam couldn't be allowed to do this, but Ronan hadn't just allowed, Ronan had helped.

And so, haltingly, words rotting with anger, Ronan explained about the forest and what he thought it was, and why he needed it working, and why he needed the will. He took Adam back to the BMW and started for town. He didn't know what else to do. 

"I'd hoped you didn't want to live with Kavinsky," was all Adam said.

"This doesn't help me move!" Ronan snarled.

"No." Adam closed his eyes and leaned back against the window of the BMW. Henrietta flew past his head in a halo of furious speed.

"You have to do that yourself," he said.

Then an offer, Adam giving himself away:

"I'll help. Do you want me to come with you?"

"No!" Ronan said.

But he did. He wanted _someone_ there. It was the third week of June. Tomorrow, it would be the anniversary of his father's death. Tomorrow, K had something planned. Ronan had already wondered what would happen if he walked away from it. Now he didn't wonder -- he knew perfectly well how stupid it was not to walk away, regardless of what might happen.

Hadn't he wanted things to change? Adam, the most ordinary boy at Aglionby, had just done something huge and terrible and magical. Why couldn't Ronan, huge and terrible and magical by nature, do something as simple as walk away?

He did bring Adam with him. The McMansion was silent in the middle of the cul de sac, but as soon as Ronan opened the door a loud and offensive and Bulgarian song assaulted their ears. 

"Hey, man--" Skov said, from where he and Jiang were doing lines on the couch. Then he stopped. He and Jiang and Ronan were all expensively-dressed and graffitied in tattoos. Adam was in plain work clothes, brown as a wren and just as out of place among all the cocaine and leather furniture.

"Where's K?" Ronan asked, not wanting to waste time. Jiang jerked a thumb upstairs. Ronan led Adam up two flights to the master, to the source of the thumping Bulgarian music. Kavinsky's clothing was strewn along the floor, along with bats studded with nails, baggies full of pills, overpriced LED sneakers, and what was possibly a Kalashnikov.

"Where were you, Princess?" K asked, when he caught sight of Ronan.

Then he saw Adam. He smiled a bear trap smile.

"Mutt follow you home?"

"This isn't my home," Ronan said.

K wasn't listening. As far as Ronan knew, he'd never had any interest in Adam and Adam had, if possible, even less interest in him, but K crossed the massive loft room to join them, tripping over something jagged. Flecks of blood rained up, but he seemed so high he barely noticed. It wasn't a machete or a chainsaw, anyway. It was the shards of a whiskey bottle. K rooted around on a side table until he found a whole one, liquid sloshing inside. He offered it to Adam. Adam jerked away.

"Well, fuck you," K said easily. To Ronan, he said, "You're not bringing him to the party, are you? He can stay home and suck Gansey's balls if he's going to act like that."

"I'm not going to the party," Ronan said. "I'm moving out."

The flick of K's lashes, lazy and slanted, told Ronan how little K believed him. Knots twisted inside Ronan. He looked away, out across the slaughterhouse mess of the floor. 

When he looked back, K was grinning again. "You can't move out, man," he said. "Where the fuck are you going to go? You go anywhere, your mind's still a knife drawer."

He pressed two fingers unbidden to Ronan's throat. It was Ronan's turn to jerk away. He vaguely registered Adam moving forward and putting himself between them and couldn't understand why, and then K was laughing hysterically and Ronan could understand that. He thought it couldn't have been the green pills this time. It had to be the red ones. They dropped out your stomach, left you waking with a black eye and no memory of obtaining it. They made the light cut and the pressure of thoughts liquidate into nothing. K was at his most unfettered now; he'd do shit and it wouldn't connect to his brain.

"You leave and I can burn you down, Lynch," he said. Shadow played on his bare chest, his white skin, like the film on a dirty sink. 

"You were planning to, anyway."

K was like that. Ronan wasn't even sure he meant for tomorrow's party to be disastrous. Ronan was never sure if he meant it. All he knew was that K would let go of the steering wheel and laugh about it. Ronan thought anxiously of the way K had looked at Chainsaw, at Matthew.

K said, "He can be fucking taught, I guess. You're going to burn anyway. What's so bad about doing it with me?"

Ronan swallowed. This was all backwash. He could see that. He'd been seeing that for a while. He tried to get Adam to move aside so he could see K better. Adam was iron, refusing to move all the way. 

"I'm going home," Ronan said. "I'm done with this. It's over."

K picked up the Kalashnikov and mimed shooting in an arc, bullet sounds, theatrical. Ronan was tired of it. He turned away.

"I don't know what the fuck you think you're doing," K warned.

"I'll send flowers," Ronan said. 

He locked his hand around Adam's wrist and pushed him to the stair. Adam didn't go down until he'd said, to Kavinsky, "He's leaving, and you could leave this too, and the worst thing is that you won't."

Ronan, the Ronan Ronan had chosen to be for months now, would have said,

_I'd rather be here than stuck in a trailer._

But Kavinsky just laughed.

"That's beyond my range, baby," he said. 

Ronan could still hear him laughing as they left. He thought Adam would say something about it, about the ghoulish sadness in it, and he became furious over the potential conversation, the need for an explanation.

But Adam tucked himself back into a corner of the BMW and said, "Can I use your phone? I have to tell Gansey what I did."

Ronan passed him the phone and started the car. He didn't know where he was going. He didn't know how Adam could manage to look both relieved and ashamed at the same time.

Before Adam dialed the number, he said, "Ronan? Whelk knows. I could feel it when I took the line. He knows he lost it."

-

Or, more accurately, Barrington Whelk knew _when_ he lost it. Exactly when. He wasn't plain old Barrington Whelk anymore. He wasn't Whelk, Latin Master of Aglionby anymore. He had powerful beings swimming around in his thoughts like a pair of agile flies, and the first fly had said

_find my daughter_

and the second fly had said

_someone took our line from us, Barrington._

It was harder than Whelk might have supposed sometimes, telling the flies apart. But he knew perfectly well that these two thoughts hadn't come from him. Barrington Whelk didn't have a daughter. But the tall, screeching woman Piper had tied to the kitchen island absolutely felt like his daughter. Her name was Gwenllian. She was several hundred years old. She had never been his favorite child.

No. He corrected himself. She had never been the thought-fly's favorite child.

He could understand this. Gwenllian was very trying. Whelk found it hard to think with her screaming.

"Please keep her quiet," he said, reasonably. He was always reasonable now because the things in his thoughts were reasonable. You were supposed to be crazy when you had voices in your head, but Whelk's voices weren't voices but regal, reassuring presences. They made him incredibly sane. Or else the money did. Whelk thought proof of sanity, like anything else, ought to be something you could buy. Before he'd had money, he'd sometimes heard voices too, but that had been static-y, hissing, buzzing, the chatter of a million spirits walking a ley line that Whelk had once fed with blood. 

Now he had just the two: Glendower to say, _let's be judicious about this, Barrington_ , and the sleeper to say, _let's make them think we're judicious about this, Barringon_. Or maybe it was the other way around. Whelk couldn't always tell them apart. For beings that were hundreds of years old, they usually sounded a great deal like Whelk himself. When Glendower said he wanted his daughter woken, it felt like the kind of request Whelk himself might make: a treasure hunt, a play for glory, a way to prod magic and make it do what he wanted.

Because the money was terrific and the new house magnificent, the antique car collection he'd bought at auction was stunning, and the interview offers from news shows very flattering. But Whelk was finding that the greatest part of being made magically rich was the _magic_. Without that, he had nothing. Without that, he was a Latin teacher. Without that, he would never have been able to arrive on his mother's doorstep and with flowers and lawyers, he couldn't have stood proud in the bathroom, listening to her wail and scream about sudden unfairness. He couldn't have told his twinkle-eyed reflection that she'd always been a selfish pain in the ass.

He would have missed having Czerny there to laugh and agree. But now he didn't need Czerny. He had Glendower and the sleeper. He had the magic, and the magic had taken all his regret.

Gwenllian screamed. It was frustratingly insane of her and Whelk rubbed his temples, already sick of her garbled nonsense, her snatches of song, her prophecies and declarations that she had three witches' dugs underneath her tunic. He'd given her a cursory review and he didn't think that last point was true. Of course, people were likely to say just about anything when they were being tortured.

"Piper," he said now, still reasonable about it. "Please try to keep her quiet."

Piper wiped her knife on Morris' shirt. She was doing the torture. Morris was just there to hold the tray of implements, like an attending nurse. 

Piper said, "I'm expanding my skill set."

Whelk accepted this. He hadn't known the Greenmantles for very long, but he suspected they were the kind to contract out their messier work. Which was a shame, supplied one of his fly-thoughts, because Piper was very good at it.

"If she's a mirror or a trap, then I'd rather we just make her into one of those, because she's not showing me how she works," Piper said now, frowning at her nails because the polish had chipped. It was a shade Barrington knew was called 'teeny-weeny bikini,' because he'd managed to schedule a massage at the spa at the same time Piper had been getting her nails done.

"It's not an 'if'," Whelk said, thinking back to the way one of his flies had alerted him about the mirror thing, and the other about the trap thing. Piper smiled. The decisiveness in his voice appealed to Piper, Whelk thought. She liked decisive men. Decisions, to Piper, were not only sexy -- they were things she could wreck spectacularly when they didn't suit her. One of the voices told Barrington that this was a nightmare, but the voice Barrington liked better told him that this was a queen.

"Fine," Piper said, rolling her eyes. "It's not an 'if.' She's a mirror or a trap but right now she's, like, not something I want to take home? Because she's going to be too loud for my collection." 

Gwenllian shrieked something very rude at her.

"Also," Piper said. "Did you hear that? She's not very supportive of other women."

"Well, it's not her fault she's from the 1400s," Whelk said fairly. This was the father in him, he thought. He felt very patient and fatherly when he said it.

"Oh my god," Piper said. "Don't defend her or she'll never learn."

Whelk allowed this. Gwenllian was his daughter but Piper was his current paramour, even if she was still legally married. That was temporary. People didn't know that Piper was a widow yet.

He stepped over Colin's body on the way to get his driving gloves and moccasins. Piper had briefly protested when Whelk had killed him, but Whelk had a number of very understandable reasons for it: one, Colin liked to think he was running things; two, neither Piper nor Whelk could run things if Colin was running them; three, Piper would probably inherit all his money; four, whatever Colin had put into place to punish his murderers probably wouldn't affect Whelk very much because Whelk had the power of an ancient king, an ancient evil, and a ley line.

So really, Whelk was just about the only person in the world who _could_ kill Colin, and they had to take advantage of that.

Piper was not immune to rational argument. Put that way, she'd agreed immediately. Colin had been annoying her lately, and in any case Whelk knew she could tell that he was three times the man Colin was. He just wasn't sure which of the three she liked best. 

With his gloves and shoes on, he climbed into the Aston Martin lazing around outside the rental property. The night was warm and hazy with pollen and insect-song, and Whelk was a prince on the hunt. He wasn't worried. He would get the line back. This was only a minor irritation, keeping him in Henrietta a little longer than he wanted to stay. But once he found who'd taken his ley line, he would kill them and be on his way. He just had to figure out who had done it.

 _Who have you robbed?_ asked the first fly, or maybe it was the second.

 _Who have you killed?_ asked the second fly, or maybe it was the first.

Whelk's mind went first to Czerny. It was an automatic response. He'd been thinking of Czerny for years. But now his thoughts were sovereign and cool. He adjusted one of his cuff-links. He thought about what it would mean to destroy a ghost. 

-

At first Gansey didn't understand what Adam was telling him. 

He had to pull over and politely ask Blue to drive. They were coming back from the Dittley farm after a few hours spent talking to the police and Jesse Dittley's family. Blue got out of the car and walked around to the drivers' side as Gansey climbed into the passenger seat, annoyed with himself for not planning this better. She was smaller and he was catching his leg on the clutch. He should have been the one to get out. He felt ungentlemanly and insensible. He could still hear the finality of the gunshots and see the caught expression on Jesse Jr.'s face. He knew that if he thought about any of that, he would devolve into gasping breaths, so he tried to focus instead on what Adam was telling him.

It didn't really connect until Blue had started the car and they were well on the way to Fox Way.

"Why?" he asked Adam. He was glad that his voice came out calm. His chest was clenching; he thought the ventricles of his heart must be squeezing shut.

Adam was quiet.

"We can't let him win, Gansey," he said. "Don't you see that? He has everything, and we have nothing--"

"We don't have nothing!" Gansey said. Adam's words burst inside his mind, an explosion every time. He couldn't make them make sense. Something had been violated now, something deeper and truer than flimsy paper buildings. 

When they arrived at Fox Way, Adam and Ronan were already there, waiting on the stoop. Gansey forced himself to look at Adam. His face was hauntingly strange. Gansey felt every inch of the distance between them.

"We shouldn't fight," Adam said, cracking first. 

"I didn't start a fight," Gansey said. "I didn't choose this."

Adam said, "If you have to make a choice and don't make it, that's a choice too, Gansey!" He broke off, as if aware of his own reckless anger. Gansey hated that he couldn't trust whether Adam was aware or not. Trust was fractured now.

Adam ran a hand through his uneven hair. 

"He's coming," he said, after a minute. "He wants the line back. We can use this--"

"I didn't want to use this," Gansey said. 

"Fine," Adam said. "Then I will."

He stood and was off, and Ronan followed. He turned to Gansey before he left and Gansey waved him off. This wasn't Ronan Lynch's doing. This was Adam's, and that made it so much worse.

"Jane," Gansey told Blue then. "I'm very sorry. But I'm unfit for company right now. Have a good night."

The Camaro was waiting for him just the way it always was when his heart felt curled into a fist. He started it and pulled away, not caring where he was going. For the first time since he'd lost his family, he wanted to leave Henrietta. He wanted to vanish without having to explain or put words to it. Gansey was very good with words but when his chest constricted like this he knew he couldn't manage many. They became more precious. Sentences became shorter. The gap between what he intended and what came out seemed to widen. Impassable.

He didn't know how long he drove or how far, but it was good and dark and he was in the mountains when the air next to him became very, very cold. Noah didn't appear, exactly. It was more like he'd been there waiting to be seen, and now Gansey was seeing him.

He could have cried. 

"Where have you been?" he said.

Noah shifted. He was unformed in some way Gansey's mind couldn't explain, in a way that reminded Gansey of taking off his glasses and knowing that things were blurred but that this was natural, that he could get used to it if given time. He pulled the car over to the side of the road. Maybe Noah had always looked like this and he just hadn't noticed.

"Ronan knows where I am," Noah said. "Where I really am."

There was an emotion suspended in his words, but Gansey couldn't name it. Noah was telling him something, but he couldn't fill in the meaning.

"What do you mean, where you really are?" 

Noah said nothing, He turned his head to the window and then he turned his head to the window again, movements repeating. This was the boy Gansey had first seen by the side of the road, but only now did Gansey understand what was happening, the depth of the tragedy here.

"Noah," he said, stretching out a hand to him.

If he could make Noah stop that, keep Noah here with him, then he felt that things would be alright. They'd always been alright with Noah before.

But when Noah looked at him, his eyes were black holes.

"You'll be alright," he said. The holes were in his voice too, wavering and falling away so that Gansey had to fill in some of the sounds himself. He hoped his horror didn't show on his face. It must have. Noah said, "I told you. I told you you can't depend on me. I know it's scary, but I can't help it. That's what I am."

"No," Gansey said, shaking his head. But Noah was already fading.

"I'm a horror," he said. "Okay? I'm a horror."

Then he was gone. Gansey stared at the space where he'd been. The night was vast and hungry and Gansey wanted desperately for it to be over. Something inside him was fracturing. 

Outside the car, a lone pair of headlights pinned the road, then magnified. A shining white Supra trailed by. It looked brand new except for its smashed front fender. The boy behind the wheel was smiling vacantly at the highway. His head swiveled to Gansey and then swiveled back, unseeing. It was Prokopenko. Gansey watched him drive away, one more spirit in the night.

He spent a good few minutes not breathing. Then he made himself breathe. Then he put the key in the ignition again and turned the car around. He knew thinking of his mother wouldn't make things any better, but he couldn't help but think of her words: _you should always leave people calmer and better than you found them._

Leaving like this wouldn't calm anything, wouldn't fix anything. He made himself drive back to Fox Way, where Blue was sitting on the curb. He fractured faster when he saw her face. He felt like they'd lost Adam, but Blue had lost a friend too -- really lost him.

He sat next to her. 

"I'm sorry about Jesse, Jane," he said. Blue was fierce and magnificent when she looked up at him, and for a moment he thought she would hit him. Instead she wrapped her arms around him. She held him stubbornly, like she was fastening him to her heart. He counted out his words slowly, wanting to make them valuable.

"Thank you, Jane," he said. "Thank you for this."

He wanted to kiss her just once. If he couldn't do that, then he wanted to close this moment off and stay in it. But he couldn't do that either.

"I don't know what I'll tell him when I get back to St. Agnes," he confessed.

Blue shook her head into his shoulder.

"Isn't it done?" she said. "You're just going to argue about it and argue about it. What's the point?"

"This wasn't nothing to me," he said, trying to make her understand. "I don't need Whelk to lose. I don't want him to win, but this. You and Adam. This was enough, Jane."

Blue looked up at him, solemn and defiant.

"We have to talk to him," she said. "If we're -- if this really is something, then we can't talk about him. We have to talk to him."

She was right. But when they reached St. Agnes, Adam wasn't alone. Ronan Lynch was perched on the narrow windowsill, dominating the space, talking into his phone.

"Yes," he was saying. "With Declan. Look, I don't care if it's a long drive. Get fucking Shea to drive you. I want you with Declan in an hour."

When he hung up, he caught sight of Gansey and exhaled like a smoker, long and slow and unrepentant.

"He has to stay," Adam said immediately. "He doesn't have anywhere else to go."

Ronan looked about to argue, but now Blue stepped out from behind Gansey and said, "Okay, but I'm staying too."

They hadn't discussed this. Gansey thought Maura might have watched her leave with him in the Camaro, so he didn't feel too guilty. He sat on the bed as Blue claimed the bathroom first. St. Agnes felt even smaller than usual.

"We'll have to draw lots for the bed," Gansey offered.

Ronan snorted.

"I can go to a motel. I'm not that desperate."

But Gansey found, inexplicably, that he wanted him here. He wanted them all here, even Noah with his holes, even Adam with his betrayal. Keeping them here eased the tightening in his chest. He needed to know they were safe. 

In the end, Ronan took the bed because he was the only one who didn't care to be noble and refuse it. Blue, who'd been refusing mostly because she assumed there were gender politics at play, then climbed in after him, possibly just to see his look of irritation.

"It's fine if guests are getting the bed," she said. "Then I can take it. I just didn't want anyone offering it to me because I'm the girl."

She dangled her hand down over the side and Gansey, who was squished into roughly three square feet of floor, took it. He heard her breaths even out and tried to listen for Ronan's but could hear nothing. He knew Adam wasn't asleep because Adam was laid out next to him, nearly touching him. His pale lashes blinked at the ceiling. It would be so easy to close the space between them. Gansey closed his eyes instead. How horrible it was to want to touch someone who, it seemed, didn't want to understand you at all.

Adam's hand closed lightly on Gansey's free one.

"Gansey," he said, voice very low. " _Please_."

Gansey didn't know what he was asking for. 

"Just tell me what you were trying to get out of it," he said. He wanted to know what was so promising that it made Adam think this between them was nothing by comparison.

When Adam answered he tripped over his words, vowels blending together in his anxiety.

"God, Gansey, I don't want him to have magic. I want us to have it. I want that forest safe. I want you with us. I don't want to be the reason Ronan's with Kavinsky. I want Noah here. I want Blue. I -- it would be easier to say what I don't want than what I do."

His voice broke off. The sudden silence after this was an open mouth, painfully swallowing up every response Gansey tried to compose in his head. Maybe it wasn't a lack of understanding. They wanted the same things. But Gansey was still thrown by Adam's recklessness. He'd wanted to keep everyone safe, but Adam's actions made that feel like an impossibility.

"Don't you ever feel like this isn't enough?" Adam asked. He was crying. Gansey could hear it even if he couldn't see it. "Noah wasn't meant to be killed like that -- nobody would be. Blue's meant to have a piece of this magic. Just look at her and you can tell. You didn't deserve what happened to you, to be stuck here without anything, and I don't think Ronan deserves what he's been handed either."

Gansey heard the sharp intake of breath. Ronan was awake, though Gansey didn't think Adam could tell. Blue was awake, too, because she squeezed Gansey's hand very suddenly. 

"You can't expect me to just let him walk away with that power and that favor when we need it," Adam said. "I can't just do nothing. I didn't just do nothing when it came to me -- I _didn't_. I wouldn't just do nothing for the rest of you."

His hand slipped away. Gansey breathed in deep and made himself chase after it, lock his fingers around Adam's fingers. This was the strangest love confession he had ever received, from a boy so distant and dusty and different from him that Gansey couldn't ignore it anymore. Gansey wouldn't have thought that knowing Adam loved him could be so painful.

"Thank you for explaining," he said, low and polite.

He couldn't say _you're forgiven_. It wouldn't be true. He pulled Adam in and hated that it wouldn't be true, hated himself for being unable to form the words.

\- 

Piper was starting to get bored when the Gray Man called. 

"Were you lying?" she said, instead of hello. 

She didn't care to say hello to the Gray Man. She cared about turning her magical sleeper find into something more interesting than a screaming woman, and she cared about the Greywaren. It could make nightmares real. Piper wasn't the slightest bit afraid of her nightmares, but she thought that if she could make them real then other people might be. 

The Gray Man sighed. 

"Is Greenmantle there?"

Doubtful. Piper prodded him with her toe. She knew that something in Barrington was very probably supernatural, something that peered out from the white space in his eyes, and that this something was why she didn't miss Colin even a tiny bit. But, as spousal death went, this wasn't a bad way to lose Colin, not having to feel bad about it. Piper had always loved herself best anyway. 

"Whatever," she said. "I want your information on the Greywaren. There's a strip with a yoga studio outside town. Meet me there ASAP with everything you have."

There were ten or forty-two minions in the house, because Colin had always loaded up on minions, but Piper took only her favorites, which were Morris and the big one. She had a gun, so she wasn't very worried about the Gray Man. Morris piled into the passenger side and the big one squeezed into the back and Piper took the wheel. It was very late and they were in a section of Virginia that had more cows than people, so most of the radio options weren't things Piper was very interested in, but halfway to the strip mall she found a public radio interview with a woman who had survived a war-torn upbringing and devoted much of her later life to eco-terrorism. Colin would have complained but the minions just looked agreeably interested.

The Gray Man was waiting in a streetlamp halo that broke the nighttime gloom, leaning against the ugliest champagne-colored car Piper had ever seen. His gun was visible in its shoulder holster, which would be pretty much illegal in a state with fewer cows and more sensible laws. Piper let the minions get out first, toting along their muscles and their equally-visible weapons.

"All I can tell you is that there's a fault line along these mountains--" the Gray Man began. 

Piper rolled her eyes. "Shove it," she said. "God, do you think I'm stupid? It's like you think because you're displaying a phallic symbol, the rest of us are just supposed to take your crap. Tell me what you really found."

The Gray Man frowned and focused on something just beyond Piper. Piper didn't appreciate being frowned at or ignored, so she shot one of his tires.

"Sorry," the Gray Man said, looking unperturbed. "It's just that I can't figure out what those two boys are doing over there."

"I'm not going to fall for that," Piper informed him, and shot him in the leg. He went down soundlessly, which was somehow deeply creepy, and Piper gestured to the minions to cover him while she turned around.

To the Gray Man's credit, there really were two boys at the darkened edge of the parking lot. They were transferring something from the backseat of one overcompensating boy racer car to the trunk of another. Piper squinted at the something. It had a dangling white hand.

She left the big minion threatening to kill the Gray Man and took Morris with her as she crossed the parking lot. Piper hated teenage boys, but she had very good instincts when it came to the supernatural, and right now those instincts were screaming at her.

"It's a woman," she informed Morris, when they were close enough to see. "She's asleep."

Morris nodded loyally. The skinnier teenage boy heard and laughed. He had a vulture quality. He said, "Get out of here, bitch."

Piper _hated_ teenage boys. To make a point about polite ways to treat adults, she shot his friend in the head.

The gun went off. The bullet went in. The other boy gurgled and scratched at the wound on his forehead, like no one had explained to him that he was supposed to die when he was shot. He smiled at Piper and there wasn't one iota of life in it, but he was still alive.

That was interesting. The skinny teenager produced a shiny silver gun and aimed it at them until Morris wrestled it away from him and hit his head several times against the racer car. Morris passed the gun to Piper and she was able to note that it said DREAM KILLER, which was also interesting.

By now the Gray Man had overpowered the big minion and limped up to her.

"You are such a liar," Piper told him. Then she snapped at Morris to stop hitting the skinny one's head against his car door. She began to think about Gwenllian and how she didn't want a living woman at all, but a satisfyingly dangerous weapon. Not a weapon. A nightmare. She had to make this skinny teenager dream so that she could figure out how he did it, where the Greywaren was.

"What are you doing with that woman?" the Gray Man said, pointing at the lady in the trunk.

"Whatever he wants?" Piper said, at the same time that the skinny teenager said, "Whatever the fuck I want."

Piper regarded the teenager. The teenager regarded Piper. Piper had the same curiously satisfying sensation she'd had when she'd first met Colin. Here was another person who, like Piper, didn't care very much about his effect on other people.

"Is she like a sex dream?" Piper said. It was a possibility. The woman was tall and and slim and blonde and so like Piper that they could have been sisters, and that was saying something because Piper had belonged to a very selective sorority. She added, "That's disgusting."

The boy started laughing. 

"Man, I hope she is," he said. "That'll hurt even more than what I'm going to do to her."

He nodded at his gurgle-stooge and the gurgle-stooge moved to intercept Morris. Morris' shots had no effect on him. Piper wrinkled her nose.

" _Can_ you hurt these dream people?" she asked.

The skinny teenager looked annoyed. This hadn't occurred to him. Piper, who had never had a single maternal impulse in her life, said, "Maybe you need, like, a little guidance."

"No," the Gray Man said immediately. 

Piper shot his other leg. This time she used the dream gun because she wanted to see what it would do. What it did was bind his legs together with something that looked like very strong cobwebs. He went down, cursing. She tried again and this time it let out a green smoke that put the Gray Man to sleep. Disappointed, Piper dropped it in her handbag.

"Could you make something that could turn a really annoying woman into a trap?" she asked.

"Nothing gets you nothing, lady," said the skinny teenager.

Piper rolled her eyes. 

"I could probably figure out how to hurt a dream person," she said. It sounded like bragging but it was a plain fact. Piper knew her strengths. 

Eventually, she and Joseph -- this was his name -- got Morris and the stooge to stop fighting. They made arrangements to deal with the blonde and Gwenllian. Piper left the Gray Man and the big minion's body in the parking lot and drove back to the house with the blond in her trunk and Joseph's vague, grandiose sort of plan for tomorrow in her mind. She was already trying to figure out how to make it more interesting.

Barrington called before she reached the house. Normally she didn't pick up when she was driving because she'd once seen a documentary about how dangerous that was, but this time she did.

"Are you having a good night?" Barrington asked.

"Totes. I think I might get the Greywaren tomorrow. Are you having a good night?"

"Fantastic," Barrington said. "I'm vandalizing a grave."


	11. Chapter 11

It was early morning when Ronan's phone buzzed.

_i know u motherfucker_

_like i can't see thru that invisibility cloak harry potter shit_

Ronan's ribs became claws, piercing in at his heart. He handled the small glowing screen frantically. He couldn't make himself type a response. It buzzed again.

_better come to the forest or i'm feeding her a fucking cocktail_

He climbed out of bed and pulled on his boots, slipping his knife into one. Behind him, Gansey said, "Ronan?" 

His voice was crisp. Like Ronan, he hadn't been sleeping. Ronan's hands were shaking and instead of tying properly they knocked into one of Gansey's endless little buildings, strewn over every corner of available space. Gansey leaned forward and picked it up, frowning, but otherwise made no comment on it.

"Where are you going?"

Ronan considered not telling him. To be Gansey's friend was to be a member of Gansey's kingdom. Ronan felt wild, cut loose. He didn't want to have to decide that yet.

But Gansey's voice woke Blue, who stretched and said, "What's going on? Where's Ronan going?"

She jerked her chin at Adam, and in response Gansey gently shook him awake. When Adam sat up there was a tense line between his brows. Ronan tossed him the phone the phone. Adam caught it, reflexes surprisingly good for someone who'd only woken up half a second ago. 

"This is kidnapping," Adam said in disbelief. 

"You should tell him that. He'll be really sorry," Ronan said. He held out his hand, but Adam didn't give the phone back.

"Why does he want you to go to Cabeswater?" he asked.

"Maybe he wants to reunite in a scenic location. Give me my phone."

"I," Gansey said carefully, "would like some context."

Adam looked at Ronan. Ronan didn't want to explain but didn't see any way around it. While the others tossed aside their blankets, he gave them the bare bones. He didn't like talking about his mother. Emptiness blossomed in Aurora's wake, darkly surprising. Only Matthew ever brought her up, because to Declan she was unplugged and in storage.

"Your mother is a dream?" Blue asked. 

"Whatever she is, we're getting her back," Gansey said firmly. "Adam's right. This is kidnapping. Did he give you some sense of what his demands are?"

Ronan laughed, the sound contorted by bitterness. Gansey was trying to impose sunshiney order on K. It wasn't going to hold.

"He wanted me to go to his party today."

"And now he's throwing a temper tantrum," Gansey said. He stood up and crossed to his and Adam's pile of clothing. Adam did the same. Between them they managed to scrounge up what looked like their last clean clothes: dirty khakis, tattered undershirts. Gansey frowned at their grease-stained t-shirts and ended up throwing on his school sweater. Adam, less picky, made do with his mechanic's coveralls.

"I may have shredded the invite and thrown it in his face," said Ronan, deliberately not watching them as they changed.

No one seemed to fault him. But on the way to Cabeswater the third set of texts came in:

_r u there yet._

_i can't believe u were going to miss the niall lynch memorial bash man_

The BMW and Camaro parked in the undulating grasses, this time close enough to see the forest. Despite the omnipresent threat of K it seemed larger, brighter, more alien. Had Adam done this? Ronan looked at him so quickly that it was the barest crackle. He could tell that there was something different to Adam. 

"Did he say where we should go?" Gansey asked, as they climbed over uneven ground and brushed elbows with mossy branches. 

Ronan shook his head. K liked to get primal. He liked a good hunt. 

But they found what he wanted them to find soon enough. The trees were saying something, but all the sound was sucked out of Ronan's ears. It was Noah. Not Noah. The gravestone, the bones. All shattered, strewn along the clearing, the earth ransacked and despoiled. 

"Who did this?" Gansey breathed out. He reached wildly for the jagged bones, like he wanted to protect them, like this would help.

Ronan's phone buzzed again. Ronan threw it at a nearby tree. It should have shattered but it didn't. Adam picked it up. He tried to pass it to Ronan and when Ronan didn't take it Gansey said, "Give it to me. What's your password?"

It was phrased as a question, but it carried all the power of a command. Ronan told him. Gansey punched it in and looked at phone for a half-second, then said, "Whelk did this."

He held the phone out and this time Ronan took it. K had sent over a photo of Aurora, draped over a coffee-colored leather couch, She looked like Ronan could wash the sleep from her eyes just by calling her name. There was a blonde woman sitting next to her, staring at her own phone and looking bored. It was the same woman they'd seen with Whelk the day before.

 _i can make new friends 2 man_ , buzzed K, unceasing, relentless. _hear u probably took whelks shit. well now we have your shit._

Ronan's anger flashed. He felt his mouth falling open. Scorpion grin, with nothing but malice in it. 

"Is this what you wanted?" he asked Adam. Adam flinched. Ronan was nothing more than a feral mouth. He turned on Gansey, expecting a fight.

For a moment, Gansey said nothing to contradict him.

This suggested that Ronan was right, and yet even Ronan knew he was wrong. He faltered. The silence locked his words into place, made them things Adam couldn't unhear. Ronan didn't know how to take the sting back.

"I think that's unfair," Gansey said finally. 

"I think it doesn't help at all," Blue said. 

She was the only one trying to find all the pieces of bone. Ronan had let this slip away unnoticed but now it snared him. She was looking at the shards in her hands and trying to line them up, unafraid despite the wetness around her eyes, every inch the psychic's daughter.

But her voice hitched.

"I don't think he can come back," she said miserably. "I think--when I talked to Calla and my mom about him, they said he probably appears because his bones are on the ley line. All his bones. But I don't think all of him is here. Where's the skull?"

Adam breathed out hard and it sounded like a sob. She was right. There was no skull. They separated and hunted for it, combing every inch of the forest, from the stream bed to the high branches the boys could reach and Blue could climb to without breaking her neck. There was no skull. Whelk had the skull and Whelk had Ronan's mother.

"This is sick," Gansey said finally, passing a hand over his eyes. 

But it got worse. 

_i start dreaming_ , K buzzed,

_in 3_

_2_

_1_

Dreaming meant stealing. Stealing meant a shock to the forest, the place drained. K had described it like holding up a Wal-Mart. What happened if the forest disappeared, and they went with it? 

Ronan said, "We have to go."

Blue and Gansey accepted his explanations, but Adam lingered, stubborn and terse. 

"It won't fade away," he said. "Yesterday I gave it--"

"Nothing you could give it is going to save it," Ronan said. 

He watched Adam stiffen as the words sliced down his spine. He didn't care. He hustled Adam out without even thinking about it. If the green around them was less vivid, the trees less formed, the air less moss-scented, he didn't want to think about it. 

He didn't look back when they reached the cars. He didn't have to. Cabeswater's disappearance was written on Adam's face and in Blue's sudden gasp. 

"Shit!" Gansey said, staring back at the place where it had been. "Shit!" His hair was thoroughly mussed, his eyes electric. 

This Gansey was boyish and fully capable of fury. Ronan wanted to keep him around longer; this was a creature Ronan could relate to. But Adam turned away, Blue at his side. Ronan watched them cross to where they could get a better look at the road beyond the grassy slope. After a minute, Blue turned to face Gansey. She looked confused. When Ronan neared her, she was saying, "There shouldn't be a bus stop here--"

A bus was pulling away from the bottom of the hill, and one of Blue's women was walking up the slope to meet them. The one named Persephone. She looked immaterial walking against the wind, like she might blow away.

"I hope she doesn't have more bad news," Gansey said. 

She didn't seem to. She stood serenely looking at the spot where the forest should be as Gansey and Blue explained their various dilemmas: K taking Aurora, Whelk destroying Noah, Cabeswater being drained as they spoke.

"If it's gone, you can't make anything," Persephone said slowly, as though the words had come to her out of order and she had to take extra time rearranging them. She didn't say them directly to Ronan, but they had to be directed at him. They applied to no one else.

"I get that," Ronan said.

"No," Persephone said, shaking her head. She turned, pale hair and pale dress shifting, and somewhere in all that hair and dress a woman who was irritatingly disconnected from the conversation.

"Adam," she said. "What does it need?"

Adam stared at her.

She sighed. Moths drifted lazily by. A lonely pickup wound its way along the road below.

"You gave the forest something, didn't you?" she asked Adam, once the words seemed to come to her.

Adam nodded tightly.

"He gave it himself," Ronan snapped. The sacrifice felt pointless and, worse than that, felt savagely dangerous. 

"I gave it my hands and my eyes," Adam corrected. "I told it I would--"

"You would do things for it," Persephone said.

Adam nodded.

"So what does it want done?"

Adam was wide-eyed, dusty lashes fluttering as he tried to blink his way to an answer. Not 'I don't know.' Ronan had watched him long enough to know that 'I don't know' never ended the conversation for Adam Parrish. 

So now Adam had no answer. He bit his lip, drawing out the last hints of color in his face.

"There hasn't been much time for you to get used to it," Persephone said, voice small. "But if you listen, you should be able to hear it. The rest of you should go talk to Maura."

She took Adam's long brown hand in her small white one and led him up the slope, to the spot where Cabeswater had been. Ronan, Gansey, and Blue stared after them.

"How it this supposed to help?" Ronan demanded.

"I think they're going to to try to bring it back," Blue said, as though this were a perfectly rational thing to take from the conversation. No one seemed to speak Persephone's language, but it was clear that Blue understood the general gist of it even if she wasn't fluent. She cupped her hands over her mouth and said, "A BUS LINE DOESN'T ACTUALLY RUN THIS WAY SO I DON'T KNOW HOW YOU'RE GOING TO GET HOME."

Persephone didn't turn around but Adam did, and then he turned Persephone around, lanky and awkward about it. He seemed to be trying to explain this to her. Ronan rolled his eyes and whistled at him sharply, then tossed him the keys to the BMW.

"Take care with it," he barked. "It's not your mom's '71 Honda Civic."

Adam said, "They didn't start making the Civic until '73."

Then he turned away, following Persephone's fluttering dress through the tall grass.

The rest of them climbed into the Camaro. Gansey frowned after Adam, following him with his eyes, but Ronan didn't want to look. Nerve and impatience overtook him. He didn't know if he wanted to believe that Adam could do it. Adam was the only one who could, maybe. That made it worse.

"If they get Cabeswater back," Blue began. "You can make--"

"If," Ronan said. "And then what? What do I make?"

Gansey looked thoughtfully at the place where Adam and Persephone had vanished out of sight.

"You make a reason for Whelk to come bargain with us," he said slowly. "That's what you make."

-

Adam followed Persephone. She was an indistinct, airy sort of guide. He, behind her, was more gaunt and more anxious. Any energy he possessed was a frantic sprawl inside him.

He thought they would stop, but instead they walked and walked. He marked time by the BMW fading over his shoulder, and soon it dropped from sight. Then he began to worry. Time felt oddly distorted, somehow

"Where are we going?" he asked finally.

Persephone stopped.

"Where?" she said. She didn't turn around, so Adam walked around her. She was worrying a lock of hair between her fingers. She looked like he'd just proposed that they set themselves on fire. 

"That," she said, "is the wrong question."

If that was the wrong one, then Adam didn't know what the right one was. He tried again.

"Does it not matter where we end up?"

"I didn't say that," Persephone said. "It matters a lot."

Then she sighed.

"I keep forgetting that you're new," she admitted.

"At this?" 

"In general." 

But Adam didn't feel new. He felt very, very old -- limbs aching from a night spent on the floor, eyes ringed by too many nights spent recently without sleep. He had thought things would change somehow when he did this. Things had only become worse, and he still felt the same. Would it always be like this? Would every step he took feel like it left him right where he started?

He closed his eyes. After a little while, Persephone said, "That's it exactly. You're raw when you express yourself, Adam."

"I don't know what that means, ma'am," he said politely. Raw didn't feel like a compliment. It made him think that he must be hunching his shoulders again. By the time he'd hit Aglionby and realized that the rich carried themselves differently, he was working too many jobs and worrying over too many other things to focus on lining up his shoulders in just the way boys like Gansey did.

"Oh, Adam," Persephone said. "If you do that you'll never get the hang of it."

He didn't think she was talking about his posture. He opened his eyes.

"Can't you feel it?" she asked.

He stared at her. He didn't want to say no, and he didn't want to say that he didn't know. When he couldn't get the hang of something, it was usually because he was using the wrong method. The _how_ was wrong. It was obsolete. He needed to try again, fail better.

"Sorry," he said.

Persephone frowned at him, like this wasn't the right thing to say either. Adam didn't have anything else to say. He said, "Can I...?" very tentatively, and she didn't say no. Somehow he always expected a no. 

Because she hadn't said he couldn't, he turned around and walked a few feet back. Nothing. Then he struck out in an entirely new direction. 

He felt the shift. Something tumbled out of place, a small bolt slipping from his fingers into the recess of a car. Or else it was an engine hiss, a groan of brakes. A sign that something was wrong and disagreeable. He wanted to fix it but was not entirely certain what the problem was. His feet led him back to where Persephone was standing, and there things felt more secure and better-arranged.

"Didn't you notice that you've been traveling on the ley line?" Persephone said.

He hadn't. The fight with Gansey had left him feeling askew and any time he'd left the line in the past twenty four hours, it had felt no different. But now he felt it, this road beneath him.

"How does this help me know what Cabeswater needs?" he asked.

"For that you need to go inside yourself," Persephone said. That didn't sound difficult, but something about the way she said it made Adam think it would be a journey. He wasn't sure he wanted to go inside himself. Maybe if he wasn't grasping so hard to keep what was outside himself -- Gansey, Blue, this strange new bond to Ronan Lynch. Whatever was left of Noah. Gansey. 

"You're going to have to fix you eventually, Adam," Persephone said. 

But he didn't know how to begin with that. And there wasn't time. The more he traveled along the path Persephone had worn into the grass, the more he realized that at some points it was brighter, clearer, healthier. He walked along a twenty-foot stretch, keeping her in the center, and felt four or five spots where the line guttered out. It needed fixing. He could do fixing. 

Some of the rocks by his feet felt warm, charged with energy. This was like any other conduit. He could do this. He put aside the thought that he probably looked ridiculous, scrabbling in the grass and dirt. In his own way, he trusted dirt. He could do this. He reached for the dull rocks and began to pull them out, clearing the way between the brighter ones.

"You're good at this part," Persephone said, sighing again. "I thought you might be. But it's better to start with the harder parts. Don't forget that you have to do those, too."

Even with this cryptic admonition, she was soon helping him move and repair, shifting aside boulders and digging holes to get at snarled roots. They worked this stretch and then retraced their steps back in the direction of Cabeswater, letting the energy guide them, patching the path of the ley line. Eventually they got in the BMW and followed it further along. The more time Adam spent aware of the road beneath his feet, the farther it stretched. It was huge. It had been here long before Adam Parrish and would be here always. As he worked he could feel himself pulled along it, outside his body. It sent him images: the fragile patch of Cabeswater now, sucked of its energy. Then Cabeswater at full power. Then the old church in the mountains, further along the line, and Gansey paused in front of the door, Blue sitting on the ruined wall. 

Ronan lying on a couch in Fox Way, poised to dream. 

"Adam?" he said.

"It's coming," Adam told him. "I'm bringing it back."

-

On the way to Fox Way, Gansey outlined his plan and goals. He wanted Whelk gone. He wanted the rest of Noah, so that Noah could come back. He wanted amnesty for Adam, and Ronan's mother back. 

Ronan liked the objectives, but didn't agree with Gansey's proposal. Not with the specifics. He said as much.

"You don't get what you're asking," he told Gansey. 

"So explain it to me," Gansey said.

But Calla, the most intimidating of Fox Way's inhabitants, brushed Ronan's shoulder and said, "He can't. He has no idea himself."

Gansey's idea was to make a copy, an airy phantasm. Something that looked like a ghost. As soon as they arrived he was pulling out his notebook and flipping through its pages, holding out his hand for Ronan's phone and snapping a picture of one page in particular. Ronan watched him text it to Kavinsky. 

"Whelk wanted to destroy Noah," he said. "He knows Noah's caught up in this, he knows Noah could expose him, so he must have wanted to destroy him."

"Yeah," Ronan said. "And he did destroy him."

"Let's convince him that he didn't," Gansey said. "Let's show him he's out-powered for once."

Out-powered because of Ronan's power. Ronan knew it could be theoretically true but the theory didn't seem to map onto his reality. Gansey wanted a copy of a Noah, something that they could use that would then fade away or something. More wailing and ghostly than the real Noah. That wasn't Ronan's style. Ronan didn't make copies. The things he made were very real. 

"He'll meet us or we'll use the false ghost to expose him," Gansey said. "He'll give us your mother, and the rest of what we want. He'll give it to us and get out of here. When he sees that you've made something that can tell people what he's done, he'll know we're serious."

Gansey was a king faced with a dangerous enemy and he thought like a king. He had an ordered, logical war plan. He would need an ordered, logical reason not to carry it out. Ronan couldn't give him one. He had only a feeling flashing inside him. He wanted to dream something to take down Whelk, but he didn't think he wanted to dream that. Dream people were still people. They weren't something to use against an enemy.

He made them leave him alone in the reading room with the door closed in case he brought back anything unexpected. Gansey didn't want to do it, but in this Calla was on Ronan's side.

"He's a snake," she snapped. "He starts spitting venom, we don't want to see it."

Gansey looked unconvinced by this.

"And if he needs us?" he said. He was determined to see Ronan's powers as an asset, chivalrously uninterested in what they might do to him. Ronan was shaken. This ironclad belief would have served him well a year ago. Now, it crawled up his spine and made him feel monstrous. 

"I won't need you," he said, short about it. "I'll be asleep."

He stretched out on the couch. He'd beaten back sleep the night before, his brain too sharp and degenerate to loose on a room as tiny and crowded as the St. Agnes room had been. Now he didn't fight it. 

In the dream, his flesh was humming with summer. He was not in Cabeswater, but in the mountains nearby, sun soaking him, Adam at his side. This was truly Adam, because he didn't look at Ronan at first. His face was still delicate, his eyebrows still colorless, but his hands worked to free a large, jagged rock that was cutting into the earth.

"It's coming," Adam told him. "I'm bringing it back."

Ronan trusted him. He walked a path that seemed cut for him in the grass, tattooed on the hillside, straight and unforgiving. He wasn't sure how long he walked it. At the end, Cabeswater was waiting as promised. Ronan felt potent as soon as he was within its confines, a meteor gaining momentum. K was still draining it, but he could feel the way new vines snaked forward, new leaves whispered. Adam was working hard.

Ronan went to the Dreaming Tree.

Noah was still there. Their Noah. Not a dream, but a boy who deserved to live. Ronan reached into the pit and grasped what he could. Noah was formless in some places and cold everywhere else. Ronan grabbed for muscle and bone, teeth and eyeball. None of it was untouched by the rotting, spreading holes. None of it was whole. 

He didn't want a copy of Noah. He didn't want a Noah that came from his head. He wanted this Noah, his friend. But when Ronan tried to lift his shoulders they slumped back down and the holes spread through Noah faster. His face was going fastest of all. Ronan thought of the missing skull.

This wouldn't work. If he brought this Noah out, what would he produce? This Noah bred emptiness and fear. And he was silly putty, dripping around Ronan's fingers. He wouldn't make it on his own. If Ronan brought him out, he would be like the song. Ronan needed a body, a place to put him.

It still felt unforgivable. 

But Ronan let himself think not just of the Noah he knew, but the Noah he hadn't known. The one that had slipped out through those holes: wrestling team, photography club, Latin club. It made the torturous walk out of the tree easier, clinging to those thoughts. He held those thoughts like they were real. They were real. 

Noah shook him awake. His shirt said VOTE FOR PEDRO. Ronan's fingers touched this Noah's cheek and wiped away the smudge. This Noah grinned.

"Gay," he said.

Ronan didn't know if it was the Noah he'd known who was saying that, because that Noah had understood it to be fact. Or if it was the Noah he'd half imagined, built out of the yearbooks. That Noah would have said it in jest. This Noah in front of him was equal parts both, an approximation, but real where Ronan jabbed him in the ribs. Soft and warm.

"It's just a fact," he whined.

Ronan swung his legs off the couch. That wasn't the fact he wanted to hear when he woke up.

"It's one of the nicer things about you," Noah said. "I could have said way worse."

Ronan jabbed him again just to feel the warmth again. It took some getting used to. Then he realized that this Noah would bruise and hurt, so he stopped jabbing him.

"You're not done," he told Noah.

Noah made a face. It was the same lip-crumpled-upwards face he'd always made before, but this time it was more vivid. It had more force to it somehow. 

"I'm not done?" he complained. "Am I a hot pocket?"

"I don't know," Ronan said. "What the fuck's a hot pocket?"

He'd meant it literally. This Noah was real to him, but he wasn't done. He wasn't their Noah. What was left of their Noah was on that road, slowly decomposing. It was the piece his mother must have lacked, the piece Matthew and Chainsaw probably didn't have, the piece that didn't come from a dreamer. This Noah was real, but he wouldn't be fully Noah until Ronan could figure out a way to keep that Noah on the road from slipping through his grasp. If he could hold that Noah, then he could take him out and put him in this Noah, combine the two, and give Noah not just form but real life.

It was a headier plan than the one Gansey had proposed. Ronan decided not to tell him about it. He opened the doors to the reading room to find Gansey and Blue sitting tangled together in an armchair in the hallway.

"Are you kissing her?" Noah asked accusingly.

"No!" Gansey said, like he'd been caught committing a crime. "No. Jesus. No. _Noah_?"

They had definitely been necking and licking, though. Ronan turned away, annoyed, as Blue jumped out of Gansey's arms and stretched hers around Noah. 

"You did it!" she told Ronan. Her eyes were bright. She added, "That means Adam did it, right?"

Ronan nodded. 

"He's still doing it," he said.

As long as K assaulted Cabeswater, Adam would be working. Ronan explained this. 

"So that's where we meet," Gansey said. "If we make Whelk and that woman go into the forest, they have a reason to get Kavinsky to stop."

Ronan wasn't sure anyone could make K stop. But he didn't mind Whelk and the woman being tasked with it -- they deserved the jagged problem that was K. He tossed Gansey his phone again and Gansey texted K these instructions, then said to Noah, "Pose."

Noah didn't just pose. He preened. His face was flushed with color, his hands askance on his hips, his mouth tugged into a grin. He was impossibly alive. Blue took a step back, then looked at Ronan wonderingly. Gansey snapped the picture and sent it. 

When he was done, he said, "Maybe we shouldn't take you. Maybe you and Jane should stay here. It's enough that Whelk knows you're out there, I think."

"No!" Blue said, just as Noah said, "Okay."

Ronan didn't waste time being irritated by this cowardice. He didn't want this fresh, spirited Noah coming into contact with Whelk, either.

"If anyone should stay," Blue said, "it's you."

This was not directed at Noah, but at Gansey. Gansey stared at her, surprised.

Her words fountained out in a rush, as though she were afraid she wouldn't say them at all if she didn't say them right then, and quickly.

"Whelk and that woman have the sleeper. The sleeper who's connected to my family somehow. And Whelk killed Noah. And Ronan needs to go to get his mother. There's no reason for you to be there," she said.

Ronan could detect some ghost hidden in her words, something more frightening than Noah. A secret. But she didn't elaborate and after a minute Gansey said, just as quietly as she had, "I am not leaving you to walk into danger, Jane. But the point is taken. I can't stop you from coming. I still think this Noah should stay. We didn't bring him here just to risk him being killed by Whelk again."

She nodded tightly. Noah looked relieved. 

But Ronan didn't think Gansey had really gotten her point. When they were climbing into the Camaro to return to the forest, she paused with her hand on the front passenger door. Sadness billowed across her face. Ronan looked away and climbed into the back. This wasn't for him and he wasn't even sure he wanted to see it.

She climbed in next to Ronan anyway, pushing into him with her elbows to get him to move. Ronan stared daggers at her, but she didn't stare back. She pulled her legs up and hugged them. The seatbelt was a distant concept. On the way to Cabeswater, she looked at everything but Gansey.

-

"Somebody's going to die today," Piper told Gwenlllian frankly.

She had everything it took to deal with Gwenllian: nerves of steel, much nicer hair, and an internal deadness that meant none of Gwenllian's noise could bother her. 

"Oho, she attempts to be a prophetess!" Gwenllian said. "The false queen, resplendent--

"Thanks," Piper said.

But she wasn't making prophecies. She was promising. She'd given Joseph very specific instructions: she wanted something that would destroy Gwenllian-the-woman, and give her Gwenllian-the-object. Piper liked magical beings. She just liked them best when they were charm-sized and could fit on a bracelet.

She counted Joseph in that. She counted Ronan Lynch in that. She counted Barrington himself in that -- however many Barringtons there actually were. Two? Three? 

Piper didn't care. One thing she missed about Colin was his collector's impulse. She was the same. Except Colin wanted everything. Piper just wanted the interesting things. She wasn't going to exert herself very hard for run-of-the-mill magical backwash.

She counted Aurora Lynch in that category. Piper had absolutely no use for beautiful sleeping women and intensely mistrusted people who did. She wasn't at all surprised to find that this was the kind of thing Niall Lynch had liked. Niall Lynch had been such a piece of shit. She was still considering this when Barrington stormed in. The thing inside him gave him the presence of an incoming hurricane. Barrington, like Colin, like Joseph despite his age, had probably always thought he was something of a hurricane. But now he actually was. A hurricane that had been playing with a skull this morning. What a weirdo.

Now he only had his phone on him. No skull. 

"You have to read this," he told her. "This little bastard is threatening me. Do you know I used to mark him down on purpose? Top of the class, my fucking ass."

He tossed his phone at Piper over the sounds of Gwenllian's nonsense-screams. The phone bounced off of the kitchen counter and landed in a pool of blood. 

"Don't throw things at me," Piper said. She gestured for Morris to pick it up. 

She examined the texts once Morris had wiped off the blood. They had been forwarded by Joseph, who was annoyed that Ronan Lynch _wasn't_ threatening him, but had instead skipped ahead to threatening Barrington. Piper rolled her eyes. 

"Typical," she said. 

"I hate teenagers," Barrington said, misunderstanding her disgust. "They think they own the world." He didn't say why this annoyed him, but it annoyed him for the same reason it had always annoyed Colin.

_They don't own it. I do._

"They think they can win this game," Barrington continued. "But we have the mother. We have the king. We have a dreamer--"

Piper said, "Who cares?"

She didn't need a list of what they had. He was complicating it. It wasn't complicated. In a war, you could sacrifice whatever didn't matter. And the only thing that mattered was getting what you came for. 

She gestured now at Aurora, slumped and slumbering on the couch. 

"Do we even need her?" she said. "Just give her to them."

She could practically see Barrington's pride swell on his face, crawling across his overlarge features. 

"You don't know what these boys are like. Entitled, arrogant, kings of their universes, and you want me to just give her back?" he said. "The universe has already given them everything."

Piper plunged the knife in and let Gwenllian scream for a bit. She hadn't asked for a social sciences essay. 

"Give them the mom. She's useless. Then, when they show up, we trap them," she instructed. 

Gwenllian reared up to choke her, but didn't make it past her bindings. Piper rolled her eyes. 

"Look," Piper said. "I'll just do it."

She was already doing everything else. She was the one forcing answers out of Gwenllian. She was the one decoding those answers. Gwenllian had called herself a trap, a witch, a mirror. Piper figured those were all the same thing. What did a mirror do? It reflected. If you meditated over it, you were basically scrying. It would deepen and enhance what you saw. It would reflect back what you wanted to see. It was always called witchy, that amplifying power. 

Could it be used to trap someone? Piper didn't see why not. She just didn't know how yet.

Rather than deal with Barrington immediately, she texted Joseph. Did he have anything yet? 

_6 cars_

_300 grams of coke_

_lynch's fucking eyeballs in a jar_

_one empty brain forest. i'm gonna suck it dry_

_no offense p, but this trap shit isn't high priority today_

_u took 1 of my dreams anyway. fucking make it work_

Given Ronan Lynch's demands, they needed Joseph to leave the forest alone for at least an hour. Piper texted him as much. Then Piper put down her knife and picked up Joseph's dream gun. It was concentrated chaos. She shot it out over Gwenllian a few times. 

Spiders. More sleeping gas, which cut off Gwenllian's garbled nonsense. Vines with teeth that scrabbled over everything. Piper stepped aside and let Morris handle those. The next shot created a swarm of fat, miscellaneous insects. The worst ones Morris killed. The pretty ones fluttered their wings over to Aurora Lynch so that they could land picturesquely in her hair. 

Barrington, watching her test this, said, "That's unpredictable."

"Imagine how unpredictable it'll be for them," Piper said. "What do we want?"

"My ley line," Barrington said immediately. "A Greywaren. Either Greywaren, they're both annoying. Czerny out of the fucking way for once. I thought I was done with him."

Piper considered this. 

"Good," she said. "We have mostly the same goals. Get the men to put these two in the car."

Gwenllian went in the trunk. Aurora went in the back. Piper took three men and the gun. 

"I should come with you," Barrington said gallantly. 

"Whatever," Piper said. 

"Well," Barrington said. "I suppose we can't sacrifice the king just yet. I'll let the queen play. She's the most powerful piece on the board."

Piper figured this was a compliment buried in a chess reference, but chess bored her. She shrugged and stepped on the gas, heading for the forest he'd described. 

It was very beautiful and big and green. Too bad. Piper rammed the car right into it, snapping off branches and wayward skinny roots. She stopped only when the ground sloped upwards and the car could go no further. 

"Uh, boss?" Morris said. 

In the backseat, Aurora Lynch was blooming like a rose, lovely eyes opening. 

She wouldn't get hurt if Piper shot her. But Piper shot her anyway, mostly to put her back to sleep. It took four tries to get the sleeping gas, which left the men in the backseat shouting and batting at insects, grabbing claws and beaks that appeared from nowhere. 

When she finally got the gas, Morris was pulling her out of the front seat to save her from it. Piper didn't thank him, because this was his job. But in her own way she valued him for this. He was the quickest thinker. One of the other men hadn't moved fast enough and was now fast asleep. Piper had Morris dump him by a tree and sent the last man ahead as a scout. 

"Find where they are and get back to me," she said. 

She waited about fifteen minutes for the scout, and then she got bored. She made Morris grab both sleeping women and follow her through the undergrowth. 

Eventually she found Barrington's hated teenagers. Three total. Two more than necessary.

She could tell which one was Ronan Lynch because he was holding her scout at knifepoint. They were both roughed-up, knuckles dusted with blood, noses bruising. But the knife was what held Piper's attention. It looked like Lynch had made a demonstration on a nearby boulder, slicing it in two. Piper was torn between wanting her minion to win and wanting to see what the knife could do on skin. 

But she was a team player. So she shot Lynch. This time noise came out, such a shattering scream that for a moment they were all frozen, just before they dropped and covered their ears, Piper included. The first thing she heard when her hearing came back was, "Ronan?"

Their sleepers had awoken. Morris, being wonderful at his job, immediately dropped the still-bound Gwenllian at his feet and put his gun to Aurora's head. 

"Don't shoot!" said one of the teenagers in the back, the handsome one. Glasses. Incredible shoulders, incredible cheekbones. Piper surveyed him, then Lynch, then the girl. 

"Did none of you bring guns?" she asked. "Did you think we wouldn't bring guns?"

She kicked Gwenllian to make her shut up. Aurora Lynch began trying to bite Morris, but Morris held her steady. 

"This one is proof not to mess with me," Piper said, pointing down at Gwenllian with her own weapon. "The other one I can trade. Okay? I don't care about her, but I know what I want. First of all, the Greywaren."

"Fine," Ronan Lynch said immediately. 

"Thank you," Piper said. "And the next thing I want is whoever has the ley line."

Now the response was just as immediate, but it came from three corners. 

"No!" said the short girl in the back. 

"No," Ronan Lynch snarled. 

"Absolutely not," said glasses. 

Piper squinted, trying to figure out which of the remaining two it could be. She said, "Okay. Maybe I wasn't clear. Either I get both the Greywaren and the person who has the ley line, or we shoot mom."

There was a rustle to her left. Piper aimed her gun at it. Branches parted of their own volition around a dusty-haired young man. He was unusual-looking, tired, but his eyes were clear. 

"I'm what you want," he said. "Leave Ronan alone."

Piper tuned out the sounds of dismay from the others, the sound of Aurora's fearful struggles, Gwenllian's incoherent song. She was starting to get annoyed. They thought she was bargaining when actually what she was doing was explaining the rules. She shot him. The branches moved to block the shot, but what came out was the sleeping gas again. Piper watched, gratified, as he dropped to the ground. 

Everyone but Piper and the new boy moved. All of the other teens moved to the boy. Aurora succeeded in biting Morris hard enough for him to let her go. Gwenllian had managed to get her legs free and was kicking herself away. The scouting minion moved to stop her, but she kicked at him savagely and managed to free her arms, half-crawling away into the undergrowth between the teenagers. 

Piper's hair billowed around her as she directed four new chaotic shots after her. Insects. Claws. Vines. Some kind of foul-smelling oil. Teenagers scattered. The handsome, broad-shouldered one froze at the first wasp, even, which Piper thought was just typical. 

"You know the ones we want!" she told Morris, and kept shooting. Morris ducked under and grabbed the dusty boy and then, when Piper had caught Lynch with the sleeping gas, hoisted him up too. Then they ran for the car.

They threw the boys in the back and Piper stepped on the gas. She felt heady and satisfied. She pulled the car out of the forest and was on the highway before she realized she'd completely forgotten about Czerny. He didn't really matter to her, but this was going to delay her plans, because Barrington wouldn't leave without dispatching him. 

Also, she'd lost Gwenllian.

Also, her nails were dirty. 

"Gross," she muttered, examining them at a red light. 

"You alright?" Morris asked. 

Piper shushed him. Her phone was buzzing. Joseph. 

_are u done_

_wheres naptime barbie_

_i have plans for her tonight._

Technically, Piper had more than she'd come for. She had a Greywaren. She had a boy who possessed the power of a ley line. She could take both boys and leave. Technically, she didn't need Joseph and she didn't need the power inside Barrington and she didn't even need Gwenllian, though losing Gwenllian like this annoyed her. 

But Piper liked to play all or nothing. 

She texted back, _I have something so much better than that._

-

Ronan and Adam were gone. 

Aurora Lynch sat on the ground with them, lovely and confused. She kept saying, "You have to get Ronan. You have to get him."

She had to be confused if she thought Gansey could accomplish that. Gansey was having a great deal of difficulty even exhaling properly. His breath scuttled up and down his throat. He had done this wrong. They were gone. They were gone. Ronan, who had helped them, who had a mother who wanted him back. And Adam.

 _Adam_.

The past few minutes played on a loop. The fat, suspended wasp, with all time grinding to a halt in its buzz. Adam's fine bones crumpling in a heap. The gun trembling against Aurora Lynch's throat, the gun directed at them. Gansey hadn't realized before how final and terribly real guns could be. They seemed to belong in action-adventure movies, not in real life. 

"Gansey," Blue said now. "Gansey. We have to get them back."

She was firm and brave and weirdly lovely even now, Gansey's every cell screamed to get her home. Blue had claimed she was connected to this, but she hadn't been. She didn't go to Aglionby. He wanted to step back through time and find the earlier Blue, the Blue who'd so fiercely despised raven boys, and convince her that she was right. She was right. He had thought he was improving, changed. He'd thought he wasn't the careless creature she'd first met. 

But he hadn't been able to keep them safe. He kept trying to breathe and couldn't. In the trees around them, he could hear the wasps buzzing. His skin crawled. Every rustle of every branch made it harder to process the tightness in his chest. Blue's arms wound around him. In his mind he saw Adam's colorless, serious face, heard Adam's words spooling out of him last night as he'd tried to explain himself.

The situation gave way to intrusive, pointless thoughts, too. He thought of how little he had made of all this magic: forest, ley line, mountains, town. And he thought of Glendower.

"Glendower never lost his closest men," he managed, because it was a claim he remembered from a conversation with Roger Malory, a claim that suddenly jumped to prominence.

"We didn't lose them," Blue said, pulling back and looking at him furiously. "We didn't."

"We did, Jane," he confessed.

He felt as though every inch of belief he possessed was shattered.

A laugh rang out. There was a song in it, and maybe a knife too.

"You are no Glendower, my prince."

It was the woman from the cave. She was battered, filthy, and garlanded in cuts, but she looked merry, or possibly just mad. She was being supported by Persephone.

"Why weren't you with Adam?" Gansey demanded.

Persephone sighed. "He ran to help you when he heard that loud noise. I couldn't stop him."

"You should have," Gansey insisted.

The woman Persephone was supporting -- Gwenllian, daughter of Glendower; daughter of _Glendower_ \-- said frankly, "You are an anxious malcontent, prince."

But then she was singing nonsense again.

"Anyone we lose, we can get back," Persephone said, in a very small voice. "We have a trap now, you see."

Gansey remembered what Gwenllian had said in the cave. It made him vaguely uncomfortable. "You mean her?" he said.

"Not just her," Persephone said, looking at Blue. "She's a mirror. That's enough to scry with. But to trap someone, you need more than that. You need two mirrors for a trap."

-

Whelk's mind was big enough for universes. It was human and demon and king.

He couldn't believe how badly he'd misused it. Teaching Latin. It was difficult to forgive himself for all those years spent baffled and murderous and so terribly underutilized.

This made it difficult to survey his former students without some resentment. Ronan Lynch, pithy and vicious. Adam Parrish, hungry and hardworking. They were excellent finds. Lynch was fatherless and unpleasant, and Parrish had been born in a trailer. No one would miss them. No one would call out the search parties. No one was waiting for them to come home.

But here in the star-encrusted night, under the tattered fairy bunting of the fairgrounds, Whelk would make them kings defeated. Kavinsky, another wayward student, had wanted to stuff them into a pair of cars and orchestrate a crash. But one of Whelk's flies had whispered,

_that's not the way to stage a sacrifice. That's not the way at all._

It had to be a sacrifice. He wouldn't get their power if it wasn't a sacrifice.

"It's, like, a ceremonial ritual," Piper explained to Kavinsky. "Like you can't get magic without respect."

Kavinsky laughed, ghoulish, ravenous.

"Respect's irrelevant," he said. "Power's a game."

He was high as a kite and Whelk was sure he didn't know what he was talking about. Rather than give him one jot of attention, he surveyed the area. Across the fairgrounds, Henrietta was arriving -- in coveralls, in work uniforms, in tight jeans and halter tops. He'd always known as a teacher that Kavinsky could draw the curious and the adventurous and the foolish, but now that his mind was expanded he could understand it.

 _He has what they want_ , pointed out the first fly. _That is what power is._

 _Power is not that_ said the second fly. _Power is being able to say and do anything you like, and having people believe in you anyway._

 _They are the same thing,_ said the first fly, annoyed. 

Whelk's demons fought sometimes. He twitched and batted at his ear, trying to dislodge them.

"What are you doing?" Piper asked, wrinkling her nose.

"Nothing," Whelk said. "It's normal."

Because his voice was very reasonable, she believed him. She turned away. 

In the end they had Prokopenko and the men arrange both boys atop a garish orange car Kavinsky had dreamed for the occasion. The ropes cut into Lynch's arms, blooming dark bruises, but couldn't seem to hurt Parrish. Small leafy vines cushioned the places where they touched his skin. Whelk frowned at this. The ley line had never seemed to do this for him. 

Of course, no one had tried to tie him up in the past month and a half.

"What are you doing?" said a passing local. 

"It's the circus," Whelk said.

"Oh," said the local. "Okay."

The night was wild and riotous. Across the fairground, fires were burning. Kavinsky had vanished into a car with a great quantity of cocaine. Piper was leafing through a magazine, bored, in the front seat of their car. The men mingled among the partygoers, large and on the alert. 

Whelk waited for Dick Gansey.

Kavinsky had said he would be coming. And Piper had described him to a tee, barring the fact that now he was apparently wearing glasses. He probably couldn't afford contacts. 

Whelk wondered if Gansey knew just why. It had taken Whelk some time to realize exactly what he'd done. The money had been restored; that was all he'd first cared about. But then the DC mansion had suddenly come up for sale, and the antique car collection. He'd walked into an exclusive country club in Arlington and mistakenly been handed the wrong three-hundred-dollar athletic bag. This one was monogrammed: R.C.G.III.

It couldn't be a coincidence that their two young hostages were Gansey's new friends. Whelk had asked for Gansey's life and received it. All but the breath itself. 

Maybe tonight he'd claim that, too. Gansey was the same as his friends now. Disgraced, poor. No one would miss him.

He took a leisurely walk around the fairgrounds as the night deepened. Everywhere rednecks set off fireworks, cursing and laughing. Volvos crashed into each other. Bodies were pulsing together beneath the picnic tables. Bottles were smashing into metal trashcans. Music pumped tremors into the landscape. Several cars were already lit from within, miniature caverns of flame that left the smell of burnt plastic heavy on the air. 

"What's going on over there?" someone asked him, a flat-faced local. It took Whelk a moment to place her. This was one of the Aglionby secretarial staff, he thought. He was pleased that the woman couldn't seem to recognize him. He looked back at where she was pointing. Kavinsky was haphazardly pouring gasoline in a circle around the orange car, his arms skinny and pale and victorious.

"Something you're going to love," Whelk promised.

"Okay," said the woman. "Got a light?"

Whelk lit her cigarette chivalrously and then pointed her in the direction of someone who wanted her. 

This was going to be a night. He walked through the trails of revelers, watching the crowds part for him. He wondered if Piper would mind if they split the Greywarens, in the end. He wondered if taking the ley line power from someone else was what made it stronger, if when he killed Adam Parrish then he, too, would gain some verdant invulnerability. He wondered briefly, frowning, if Parrish would burn. But of course he would. Forests were flammable.

He neared a payphone on the edge of the fairground, but paid no attention to it as it started to ring. He was too busy conferring with the flies to care. It rang as he claimed the hood of a Subaru for a bench and debated whether to reveal everything to Gansey before he killed him (the flies were divided). It rang as he watched Piper climb out of the car and roll her eyes at Kavinsky and make brisk motions with her arms: _why didn't you just pour it on them? God._

It kept ringing. Whelk hardly ever went out of his way to assist people, but it was starting to annoy him. He crossed to it and plucked off the receiver.

"Hey, man," said a familiar voice. "So like. You were poor for seven years. How was that?"

Whelk's ambitions surged and coalesced. He forgot about the boys on the car. He forgot about Gansey. This was the ultimate thing he wanted to destroy. He thought he had destroyed him. He'd believed that if the regret went, then this voice would go too.

"Just so you know, people thought you were a shitty teacher," Czerny said. "All of them. I don't think a single person liked your class."

"Where are you?" Whelk demanded.

Czerny's answering whine was pitch-perfect. Whelk would know. That whine was fossilized in Whelk's memory. 

"I was pretty glad you weren't sleeping well," Czerny said. "I didn't want you to sleep well. You killed me."

"Where are you?" Whelk said again. 

"I'm not anywhere you can find me. I've got no substance. You killed me."

"Where the fuck are you?"

"I mean, that's a really hard question to answer, because _I'm dead and you killed me_."

Whelk's instinct was to take a crowbar to the payphone, but the sleeper and the king were curious. He let them take charge. His voice was calm when he switched the line of questioning.

"What," he said, "do you want?"

"It would have been nice not to die. When I did I was outside me and I had to look at me. I didn't like what I saw. I was rotting. I hope when you die you have to look at yourself rot."

"What do you want that I can give you?" Whelk snapped.

"You cheated with my girlfriend, too." 

"I think she's married now," Whelk said. "I can't give her to you."

He didn't want to try, anyway. He didn't owe Czerny anything. Czerny should be dead.

"She was a really good conversationalist," Czerny said, sounding depressed.

 _He's depressed because he's dead,_ supplied one of the flies.

Whelk didn't have time for this.

"Do you want to talk to my girlfriend?" he snapped. "Will that make you happy?"

He was already gesturing at Piper. Her eyes were large, luminous, rolling planets. He could see her doing it from here. But Piper was direct and very hard to fuck with, and if anyone could get answers out of Czerny it would be her.

"That would be nice," Czerny said. "And I want a friend. I thought you were my friend. You weren't really my friend."

Classic Czerny. He'd always been happy with a girl to hold his hand, a boy to follow. It was Whelk's turn to roll his eyes. He motioned for Kavinsky to come over as well. Kavinsky made a rude gesture in response. Then the sleeper or the king gestured at Kavinsky. He walked over, cheeks hollow in the floodlights, then looked irritated when he got to the payphone, like he couldn't believe he'd come.

Piper seemed to know about the king and the sleeper, so she looked less irritated.

"There's a ghost on the other end of the line right now," Whelk explained.

"So call a fucking exorcist," Kavinsky said.

But Piper, ever intrepid, grabbed the phone.

"Hi?" she said.

"Find out what will make him pass on," Whelk hissed.

"Why am I here?" said Kavinsky.

"He wants a friend."

Kavinsky's eyes glittered. 

"Me too, man. We can make friendship bracelets. Seriously. How'd you get a ghost's attention?"

"I bashed his head in with a skateboard seven years ago."

Kavinsky looked pleased and macabre. 

"That's the fucking plot," he said.

Whelk had to massage his temples. He hoped Czerny didn't mind speaking to someone who was out of his mind on drugs. If he remembered right, Czerny hadn't exactly been a saint in that department either, so it had to even out.

As Piper handled the ghost on the phone, Whelk's eyes traveled back to the orange car. 

It was empty. The ropes were loose. The boys were gone. Prokopenko stood brokenly to one side, holding a gasoline canister that was dripping onto his sneakers. 

_How?_ screamed Whelk and the sleeper and the king in tandem.

"I asked them to wake up," said Dick Gansey.

He wasn't Dick Gansey anymore. His hair was longer and more tousled, his khakis matted with stains, his glasses smudged. The tilt of his chin was still regal, though; and so was the uncomplicated way he presented himself to Whelk, as though he were in charge and willing to take the blame for all of this. Responsibility draped across his shoulders like a mantle. It made Whelk want to punch him in the face.

Someone else had a similar idea, though not directed at Gansey. To Whelk's left there was a string of swears, a scrabbling sound. Whelk turned and found Ronan Lynch mid-punch, the arc of his arm magnificent, incessant. It wasn't a fistfight; it was the distinct possibility that Lynch would develop some kind of repetitive strain injury from the number of hits he got in. Whelk cursed. He didn't have a gun, because he hadn't thought he would need it, so he looked around wildly for a weapon. Piper had dropped the phone and was firing her dream gun: scorpions, bees, improbably sharp ninja stars. All of it was snagged by wild grasses before it could touch Adam Parrish.

"MORRIS!" Whelk shouted. But the sound was drowned by the general chaos, fireworks and screaming and crashes and bystanders. He couldn't tell where Gansey had gone. Where had Gansey gone?

Piper fired off another round. It was the sleeping gas and Whelk ducked it, cursing. Parrish appeared to have learned of its dangers by now, because he was also quick about getting out of the way, long-fingered hands catching Lynch by the collar and pulling him off of his victim.

It caught Kavinsky in the face. This wasn't significant. What was significant was the sense Whelk got, the sense of encroaching boundaries, pressure, power amplified. The mind-flies were alert and buzzing. 

_Do you feel that?_

_Do you feel that?_

The fighting had carved a circle for them out of the crowd. Now Whelk realized that a tall, wild woman stood on one side of it. His daughter. The mirror. Her presence meant more power. Greater power. Everything enhanced, sharper and deadlier. 

And she wasn't the only one doing this. Whelk picked out the other mirror on the other side of a crowd. Very small and obviously Henriettan, with clothing that had gone through a rototiller. She was amplifying everything as well, hands white-knuckled, eyes closed in concentration, like this was her first time trying to direct power to this degree.

Between them, Kavinsky swayed. He'd been in the process of struggling up against Lynch's punches when the gas caught him, but now he swung back down into the dust. He was asleep and smiling. Whelk understood that somehow the effects of the gas had been tripled or quadrupled. Kavinsky would not wake up. He would sleep forever, chasing things he could not quite steal.

Morris had by now arrived, along with a full cohort of the men and Prokopenko, who shuffled awkwardly along the edges of the crowd as though looking for orders. Lynch ducked behind him and shoved him at Piper, and he was covered in spiders. Piper was screaming for the men to grab the boys but Parrish seemed untouchable and Lynch was scrappy, and Gansey was still missing. Where was Gansey? Despite the chaos, the swell of the crowd, Whelk's mind pinned the question down and held it. It felt important. 

_He isn't important,_ snorted the sleeper, or possibly the king.

 _He doesn't have any power anymore,_ noted the king, or possibly the sleeper.

Together they said: _but_ she _does._

They didn't point him towards Gwenllian. Gwenllian was half-savage, near-indestructible, and worryingly tall for a woman. They guided Whelk along the edges of the crowd to the girl instead, just as powerful but more raw, more new. Whelk was going to have his sacrifice tonight. It just didn't have to be the sacrifice he'd planned for. 

He had her by the shoulders when her eyes snapped open, large and dark and frightened. Whelk was planning to lock his fingers around her throat when her gaze caught him. Inside him, the king and the sleeper swelled, victorious. They were magic, and she amplified magic. Until now, they had belonged to Whelk. Now Whelk shrunk inside himself. They filled every crevice. He blinked. Dick Gansey's hand caught his arm and spun him around, then punched him.

It wasn't a very effective punch. Gansey cursed in surprise. He'd broken his thumb. But Whelk wasn't there to process it. Now he was the fly, grasping for his thoughts. His body jerked, unsure of who it belonged to. The creatures inside him surveyed each other, then decided.

Whelk had been the one to win them, but Whelk wasn't what they wanted. Gansey was closer, but still not ideal. There was only one person here who embodied power, who could be counted on to keep them strong. She was bent over now with fright but quickly straightened herself, grabbed for Gansey's ruined hand. Whelk's body lurched and made contact with the skin of her arm, the edge of Gansey's wrist. It was enough.

The earth trembled. Blue Sargent did not tremble with it. Suddenly, she realized that her mind contained universes. The sensation was painful, dreadful. The creatures that had escaped Whelk's mind fought for hers, darting between her and Gansey. She bucked against him and he cried out with worry and confusion. The most terrible thing about this was how he, too, was being affected, but he didn't seem to care. He could tell that she was suffering. So he wasn't trying to fight for himself. 

"Jane!" he said. " _Blue_ \--"

But they were struggling against each other, the thing in Gansey trying to overpower the thing in Blue. Their mouths smashed together. It was a kiss. It wasn't a kiss. Blue was furious at the way it was finally happening: awkward, painful, teeth knocking. Wrong. Fate had promised her a kiss and this was at best a metaphor for one. She loved this boy. She could love him. She loved what she knew of him now: private, lonely, resistant to disorder. She loved him and yet her front tooth caught on his lip and she tasted his blood.

The thing that won out, the thing inside her, reared, amplified. It felt toxic and vicious. Gansey whispered something against her lips. Blue pieced it together a half-second too late. 

_Don't let this take her._

_Don't let Whelk hurt any of us._

Enraged, the thing inside her fought to save itself from the power of the wish, locking her hands around his shoulders, pulling him in, deepening the kiss. It was concentrated rot and death, taking her power, sucking power from him. 

Time snapped still, and then the thing inside her was gone. The first thing she heard were shouts from the crowd. No one had noticed her. They were reacting to Gwenllian felling Piper with a telephone receiver. Something crawled around near her skirt. A scorpion. Bees and wasps hummed nearby. When she looked frantically along Gansey's exposed skin she couldn't find a mark. Nothing had bit him. She knew he'd had Glendower inside him because she'd had that other thing. So he should have been alive.

But he was cold anyway. Dead.

-

The ley line stretched in front of him.

Gansey had never considered what it would look like. In his mind, it was a blurred haunting of energy, like an unpredictable radio transmission. If it looked like anything, it should look bright and electric, crackling with magic.

But it was very clearly a road. A Henrietta road, brushed with moonlight, lined by indistinct trees. He'd spent so many nights camped out on roads like these that he wasn't bothered by the hollow stillness in the air. There were no crickets, no cicadas, no birds or people. No lights from distant cars. Now and then he heard an echo, like someone talking behind a door. That was it.

He walked anyway. Walking didn't seem odd to him. The air had the solid, shimmering feel of a tranquil lake. He could walk and not disturb it somehow. He thought he wasn't even breathing into it. When he touched his chest, it was cold and still. 

"What's your name?" someone said. "Excuse me. What's you name?"

He looked around for the source. There was a shallow pit cut into the road before him. When he stared down into it he saw a boy in strips and tatters, most of his face and body eaten away. 

"Who are you?" someone said.

It was a man standing by the side of the road. Gansey tried to go to him but found that he couldn't. He couldn't leave this path. He looked up at the man, alarmed.

"You were always supposed to be the one to walk it," the man said. "Not him."

He jerked his chin at the body in the pit. Gansey looked down again and tried to place its identity, but the details were elusive. 

"I told him it would slow this rot, if he just let me mark you," the man continued. "I could have prevented it from happening this fast. And I could have made you a king."

It was hard to force out a response. Gansey felt like he was losing the ability to arrange his words, though he suspected he'd been decent with words before. He only wanted one word now. Why. Why?

"Consider me a dream," the man said. "I have always been a dream, made to fulfill desires. And this is what makes me regal. My willingness to give. And you? Who are you?"

Echoes gathered behind his voice, giving it force. Gansey had skirted the boy in the pit and was walking because he had to walk. The man was now walking next to him, just off the road.

"Please," the man said softly. "Will you tell me your name?"

Gansey couldn't turn off of the road, but he could tilt himself to face the man. For some reason, he heard a woman telling him that a gentleman always faced people calmly. He didn't feel calm. He didn't feel anything. It took effort to dredge up the name.

"Gansey," he said finally.

"Is that all?" the man said.

Images flashed in his mind. Shining cars, polished floors, the easy slide of a card back into a wallet. But none of that felt like him. He closed his eyes and tried to grasp for what did: a fine-boned, serious face; a swear; a shoulder he wanted to pull close. But all that was fading fast. 

"That's all there is," he said finally. 

-

Gansey's wish had destroyed the thing inside her. And then it had done more than that. Somehow they lost the attention of the crowd. Ronan pushed off of the last of the men he'd been fighting and staggered upright, hurt but not bowed. Adam worked in silence to tie Piper up with ropey vines, possibly ones fired from her own gun. Gwenllian sat on a nearby picnic table and laughed and laughed.

Whelk was stretched out on the ground, blinking without seeing anything. Blue's head was on fire, and the terrible thing had only been in her for a few minutes. It had been in Whelk for over a month. She wasn't sure he would recover. To be safe, Ronan used the last of the vines to tie him up anyway.

Blue still held onto the body. Where there were bodies, you were supposed to be afraid of what the police might say, or at least that was late-night TV had taught her. But somehow she suspected the police wouldn't blame them. 

"He didn't want Whelk to hurt any of us," she managed to say. "He didn't want any of us to suffer for this. That was what he wished for."

Ronan didn't stop tying Whelk up. 

"I know where he is," he said, though this made no sense. "I know where he is. Okay? Tell Parrish that. I'm going to try to get him back."

Adam. Blue's eyes snapped to him, to where he was working to gag Piper.

"She's secure," he shouted, when he was done. He shouted it easily, like he was answering a request no one had given him. Gansey had never had to request things from him outright. That wasn't the relationship they'd had.

When no reply came, he looked at the body in Blue's arms. Adam was intelligent, so his confusion was very brief. The next emotion to cut across his face was worse than that.

"I know where he is," Ronan said again, before he could say anything. "Okay? I'll get him for you. I'll try."

His tone revealed that this was a rough, uncertain promise. Adam looked at him wildly.

"How?"

"If I can hold him, I can get him back," Ronan said.

"Can you hold him?"

Silence. Something in Adam's face crumpled. Blue felt her heart echo it. 

But Gwenllian laughed her loudest laugh yet.

"Think, little witch," she barked. "One to keep the line running. One to walk it after the spirit. And one--"

She stopped, and broke into song. Something about blue lilies, mirrors, queens and kings. Ronan looked like he wanted to hit her.

But Blue thought about this. One to keep the line running. One to walk it. And one -- one to amplify their powers in case they faltered. One to trap the spirit. 

Or, well, two.

She looked up at Gwenllian. She did not feel brave, but the words that came out of her were brave.

"Help us," she commanded.


	12. Chapter 12

They called Fox Way. Blue politely asked the adults to deal with Whelk, the woman, and Kavinsky. Ronan asked less politely. He didn't care what happened to Whelk and the woman. Jail or death would be fine.

As for K, he slept. And slept. And slept. He looked happy in his sleep, but he wouldn't be creating whatever made him so happy, because he wouldn't wake up. Ronan edged away from this. They had other things to deal with. This he buried inside. 

It was nearly three in the morning when they made it to Cabeswater, so Adam, a habitual denizen of this hour, drove the car. His hand grabbed for Blue's and she closed the space between the driver and passenger seats, taking it. It was something Ronan had seen her do several times with Gansey. He was in the back with Gwenllian and the body that was stiff as a board. 

He and Adam carried it into the forest. The corpse wasn't Gansey; it was a copy. And it would go fast, and Gansey's spirit would go fast, if they didn't do this quickly.

The trees murmured. Ronan ignored them.

"Ronan!" said his mother.

Ronan almost dropped what he was carrying. 

It was really her, standing flushed and lovely by a strand of naked willows above a slow-moving creek. She helped them rearrange the body underneath the trees and between the frost-tipped crocuses. This part of Cabeswater was chilly, late winter or early spring, and it seemed to please Gwenllian immensely. Her singing almost drowned out the crackling Latin of the trees.

"They're happy to see you," Aurora told him. "All of you."

Greywaren, mirror, sacrifice. Ronan would bet they were happy. He wasn't; he needed some direction.

"What do we do?" he asked.

"The mongrel must power the line," Gwenllian put in. "He isn't needed here, but where the energy is weakest."

Adam stiffened, but didn't disagree. 

"Your car's back there," he said, jerking a finger away from the way they'd come. "On the other side. That's where I parked it. I can take it further down and find the next big blockage."

Ronan and Blue nodded. Adam looked at Gansey for a moment, then rubbed a hand along his eye, smearing his cheekbone with dirt, and turned to go.

"What about you?" Ronan demanded. 

Blue frowned. "We have to trap him in your dream, right? To keep him from walking the corpse road all the way. Can we even do that?"

Gwenllian was dancing in and out of naked willow branches, but stopped long enough to cackle and say, "Does he believe that mirrors do not follow him into his dreams? What is the inside of the mirror if not the world of dreams? What does he believe lies on the other side of our glass?"

Ronan almost said _thanks, that's really fucking helpful_ , but his mother was with them. Instead he pulled up a clump of crocuses furiously. Blue caught his eye and he was glad to see that she was just as annoyed as he was, but she didn't commit crocus manslaughter. She said, after a minute, "I guess that means we'll figure it out."

Ronan nodded. Against all odds, he trusted her. He didn't remotely understand her appeal, but she was welcomed by the trees. She was sensible when things became unbearable. And she had warned him away from her home, and Ronan didn't have to like that difficult protectiveness, but he understood it and respected it.

He stretched out on the other side of the willow and felt his mother slip her hand in his. 

"I didn't realize you were tired," she said. There were no worry lines on her because Aurora never showed any lines at all, but she touched her finger to her lip, the gesture regal and concerned.

"I'm not," Ronan told her.

"Alright, my love," she said. He closed his eyes.

From Cabeswater to Cabeswater. Without the pills, it was a soft journey, a blink. He opened his eyes and there was Orphan Girl, frowning at him.

"Why won't you take me out?" she said. "Don't you know what I'm for by now? I think I know."

Ronan shushed her. He stood and walked to the Dreaming Tree, stepping between the rotting cavity where he knew she wouldn't follow. The road had form today. Gansey must have given it form. It was lovely, an amalgamation of all the roads that made up Henrietta, tree-lined and poorly-paved, with distant bursts of neon from the main street, the power plant, the high school stadium. 

But Noah was still in the pit. Ronan looked around for Blue and Gwenllian but couldn't see them. Still, when he tried experimentally to make his mother's song, it came faster, quicker. The shell that appeared in his hands had distinct form. He tested it, wondering what more he could make, and it flashed between his fingers, raw possibility. A book. A candle. A knife. Pure dreaming, anything he liked. They were doing it. His powers were amplified. 

He settled on the shell again and this time he didn't hold it to Noah's ear, but skimmed along the edges of one of the many holes. Noah wasn't structurally sound. Parts of him peeled away and tumbled inside, like liquid falling into a drinking horn. It was gruesome and miraculous, collecting what was left of him like this. Ronan did it anyway. He scraped Noah into the shell: hair, ear, wrist, navel, shinbone. The shell glimmered when he was done, spirit mingling with song. 

Then he skirted the empty pit. He wondered where Gansey was. There was no time to mark how long Ronan walked before he saw him in his Aglionby-blue sweater, shoulders hunched, somehow marked by the beginnings of the same crude decay that had almost eaten Noah. 

Ronan wanted him to stop walking. He put all his thought into this desire, held it fast, made it a command. 

Gansey dropped to his knees. Ronan's relief was wild and fierce. He put a hand on Gansey's shoulder and held him firm. This would be the hard part, wanting to bring this Gansey back to his body, wanting to bring Noah's ruined soul back the same way.

"What," someone said politely, "are you doing?"

Ronan turned.

A very old dream stood patiently by the roadside, its eyes dark with interest. Ronan didn't think it was one of his.

"What kind of dream are you?" Ronan said.

It looked like a man, skin papery and ancient, eyes wild and dark and bordered by hollows. He was a mummy, wrapped in livery and gold but crumbling within it. The longer Ronan looked, the less he felt like a person. He felt like a night horror, like the idea of a person commingled with the idea of something else. When he smiled, it was like seeing a double-pair of beaks open. His breath had the rattling clack of raven claws.

"Why do you look like a horror?" Ronan demanded. He pulled Gansey in, away from the man.

"I am one," said the man.

Ronan puzzled this out.

"Someone dreamed you by accident."

The man nodded. 

"I think very few of us are intentional," he said. "In my case, it began with pain and war. This took form, all the evil that men succeed in when they attempt to do good. And they wanted something to bring them out of that."

"They made you," Ronan guessed.

The bird-man nodded. Now he looked more man than bird, closer to something that might have really lived at some time.

"They wanted a king," said the man. "So they had one. And not only a king but a dream, designed to meet their every favor, grant their every wish."

"What happened to the evil?" Ronan demanded.

Now he was less man and more savage bird.

"It traveled with me," said the bird-man carelessly. "It was my reflection, wasn't it? I was meant to lead people. One cannot lead without something to lead against."

"But what _happened_ to it?"

The beaks frowned.

"It is gone," admitted the bird-man. It gestured at Gansey. "He destroyed it. That was not what I wanted at all."

Ronan could guess at what he'd wanted. This shadowy thing couldn't walk the road, he thought, because it was like Aurora. It would never die, only fall asleep. But at some point its body must have given way. Dreams were tough to hurt, but flesh didn't last forever.

"Take me," the man said.

Ronan pulled Gansey in.

"No thanks."

"I command it!"

"Okay," Ronan said. "But I command you to fuck off. So that's what we call an impasse."

"Haven't you ever wanted something to solve your troubles?" the man said, irritated. "Something to grant you every favor, to keep you safe, to stand by you when you need it?"

Ronan didn't even have to think of the answer.

"I'll have that," he said. "But the normal way. Thanks."

The bird-man laughed. It was a screech. Ronan could see where Gwenllian had inherited that.

"From _him_?" it said. "I've seen inside him. You do not want him. He'll break under that pressure. It will destroy him. It has."

"Fine," Ronan said. "So then we stand by him."

And he hooked an arm around Gansey's waist and hauled him up, clutched the shell in one hand, and -- because it felt right -- flipped the bird-man the bird.

"Later," Ronan said, and dreamed them awake.

-

Gansey awoke beneath the trees. One of the trees was falling on him. Luckily, it was made of paper mache. He lifted it aside easily and reached for his glasses. It took some hunting to find them, nestled between some craft supplies on the windowsill. They were smudged and dirty and trying to clean them with his sweater only made it worse, because his sweater was dirty too.

He was in Fox Way, in Blue's narrow bed. His back ached. His hand hurst worse. Beech branches scraped the window, asking to be let in. When Gansey undid the latch and obliged, he caught snatches of sound from the yard below. 

They were exactly the sounds he wanted to hear. Voices warm with summer, vibrant with Henrietta. Adam and Blue, sitting beneath the tree, her dark head bowed close to his dusty one. Ronan Lynch hunched to one side, attempting to edge away from Blue's cousin Orla. 

"Yo," someone said.

It was Noah. It felt like the Noah who'd sat with Gansey by the roadside. This left Gansey strangely unsettled, because it didn't look like that Noah. This Noah's hair was damp and dark from the shower, his cheek was unblemished, and his chest rose and fell. He smelled like discount shower gel. He sat next to Gansey on the bed and squinted at him.

"You're alive," he told Gansey. His expression wasn't Noah. It was too new with happiness. 

"So are you," Gansey said. He tried to flex his hand for some reason and immediately decided there was no good reason for doing that. The hand hurt too much. He tried to think back to why it hurt and couldn't. He had no idea what he could have been doing.

"We lost time, though," Noah said now, sounding glum. "When part of you goes, it really goes. Which is fine for you. You were dead for like one night. But I was dead for seven years."

"What do you remember?" Gansey said, trying to remain calm.

"All the ghost stuff. Like maybe one-tenth of the living stuff. You?"

"I remember you being a ghost as well," Gansey said carefully.

What had made their ghost into this Noah, the living Noah, was a total mystery to him. It wasn't the only mystery. _You were dead for one night_. Gansey tested the concept and discovered that he didn't like it at all. 

Then he felt ashamed of himself. Noah, like Noah had said, had been dead for far more than one night.

"We'll be alright," Gansey told him. "We're alive now, aren't we?"

He felt untethered as he stood up, like the ancient, hidden parts of his brain were screaming and screaming loud. It was a shameful way to start the day. It practically rendered him useless. He wanted to be better than that, at least for Noah. He fired off the first questions that came to him.

"How are you finding it? Is it working? What do you need?"

"I'm not dead," Noah said slowly. "So it's an improvement?"

But in his own way he sounded just as unmoored as Gansey felt, so Gansey offered him a hand and pulled him up. 

"Let's find the others," he said.

Because he couldn't be sure that Maura Sargent knew he'd been sleeping in her daughter's room, he took the stairs as quietly as possible. But he didn't need to. Fox Way shook with noise. Someone was singing loudly in the attic, and someone else was threatening them over what sounded like getting their hair cut. Persephone and Blue's aunt Jimi were banging pots in the kitchen. Maura Sargent was theatrically reading cards for the Gray Man in the reading room. The house's various anonymous children played all over the hallways, and with his smudged glasses Gansey was very bad at not running into them. He wanted to meet the others in the yard but decided to circle by the Camaro instead. It would be right on the curb, where he always parked it. There would be a cloth to clean his glasses in the glove box, where he always kept it.

He could have borrowed a cloth from the kitchen but somehow the simple order of these things felt comforting. His breath came in easier when he thought of them.

"Wait here," he told Noah, and turned to the front door.

Noah protested and told him not to open it, but it was too late. Cameras flashed in his face. People swarmed the step, making the sudden rush of heat from the outside more potent and confusing. A woman in a teal blazer shouted questions at him, and a man with a newscaster haircut valiantly shouted her down with his own, nearly identical questions. Gansey looked worriedly for the Camaro, but it had been cornered by news vans. He wanted to free it. Steps thundered behind him and Calla's strong hand was on his shoulder.

"Get inside," she said. "Come on, get _inside_ \--"

She shut the door and whirled on him.

"What Whelk did to hurt you is undone. Remember?"

He must have forgotten it, because he had no idea what she was talking about. The newscasters' words played over and over in his head.

_How does it feel to have your money back? Do you have any words for the men who falsely accused your mother?_

"My mother's cleared?" he asked dumbly. "I have everything back?"

It was good news. He knew it was good news. But Calla still regarded him with pity.

-

This time he did go to Maitland's office. Everything was being catalogued and restored: bank accounts, antique cars, the D.C. mansion down to its very last figurine. Three urns came from Ischgl and he left them lying on a side table downstairs before he realized what they were. Senators telephoned him anxiously, and so did cousins and long-lost friends in Lexington and Charleston and Little Rock. The president shook his hand. Several people emailed him about writing his mother's biography.

He woke one night, horrified, and sprang downstairs to get the urns, but then he had no idea what to do with them.

His parents had never done anything worse than dodge taxation and the dodging had been done in perfectly legal ways. Maitland said they were only guilty of smart investments. Maitland said there was no point feeling apologetic over it. Maitland said that there were no laws on the books that could hold them accountable for anything. 

But it still took nearly the rest of the summer to sort it all out. He'd forgotten that having money was easy, but it was time-consuming too. He didn't make any public appearances or sit on any talk shows, but rejecting all the offers took time. Sitting with his various financial advisors took time. Fourteen people held dinners in his honor and he wasn't sure how to say no to some of them. Seven more set up scholarship funds in his name, and this he said yes to outright. Their sympathy wasn't real but the money was, and for someone like Adam, maybe, that would be enough.

It was late August when he finally had the time to call Aglionby, ask for Pinter, and explain how strongly he felt about the difference between a full and a partial scholarship. He also believed very strongly in second chances, so he informed Pinter that he would be returning.

"We would be happy to give you a second chance," Pinter said.

"That's very kind, but I'm the one giving it to you," Gansey said. He knew it came out nettled and that his mother would have hated to hear him, but he didn't care. His new secretary had gone over the month's calendar this morning and he'd realized that he'd missed Adam's birthday, and Blue's too. 

"You can take that second chance and give it to Ronan Lynch instead," he continued. 

Because he was offering to fund a new field house, they didn't refuse him.

He dialed St. Agnes after that, but Adam wasn't in because these past few months Adam was never in, no matter when he called. Ronan, being Ronan, never picked up his phone and only texted the vaguest replies to his questions. And when he called Fox Way it was no better, because Blue was also busy -- taking her driver's test, or walking dogs, or taking her driver's test again, or working. _You remember what working is, don't you, Richie Rich?_

Had he said something, done something, in the time he'd lost? What had he done to make them distance themselves? Why couldn't he remember it? 

Whatever it was, he knew he had to make it up. He would. He stayed up nights worrying over it, but the worrying was no use. He needed to go back.

When summer was dying, the days long and orange-gold, the mountains crowded with insects and dull humidity, he did. Back in mid-July he'd had Maitland bid low on the ruined factory building, on its knees and ready to drop. The bid had been accepted and by this time the factory had been cleared of debris and made semi-habitable, beams repaired, name painted back on. Maitland warned that there was still work to do on the first floor, that for now there was no place to put the fridge except for the bathroom. Gansey didn't care. It was in Henrietta, so it would do. He let himself in and breathed out, taking in the resurrected space. High ceilings, air, light, even though two months ago it had almost been condemned. 

Rebuilt.

He hoped that he looked on the inside the way this place looked on the outside. He wasn't sure he did, but he hoped.

Adam wasn't at St. Agnes when he went by. Blue wasn't at Fox Way when he went by there, either. 

"She's working," Maura said as she opened the door.

"She seems to be working an awful lot these days."

"Well, Nino's is down one busboy-slash-dishwasher," Maura said agreeably, and closed the door.

But Blue wasn't at Nino's. Donny was, more welcoming than Gansey had ever seen him. His oily politeness made Gansey understand that he would never be able to eat here again. He wrote a quick check to cover the cost of the ovens and raises for all the staff, thanked Laurence and Cialina, and left to check Boyd's. No Adam. Only Boyd. Gansey reached for his checkbook. Boyd reached for Gansey's shoulders.

It was the most awkward embrace Gansey had ever experienced. He wasn't sure why Boyd was crying over the front of his jacket, and all of the explanations he could come up with made his breath hitch.

"Is Adam alright?" he managed. Something had to have happened. Adam had been fired. Adam was hurt. Adam had returned to the trailer.

"What?" Boyd said, blinking past the inexplicable tears that filled the lines near his eyes. "What? Adam's fine. Just really thought we'd lost you, Dick. Adam said you'd gone back." 

"Oh," Gansey said, relieved. "Well, I did, but I'm here now."

Boyd squinted at his suit and his shining car. Gansey had resolved to keep the Camaro shining for the rest of its life.

"You take them to court?" Boyd said. "For the pain and suffering?"

"Oh, no," Gansey said. "No. It was all resolved out of court, thank god."

Boyd nodded. 

"You've got to be careful, though. People like that don't think our laws apply to them," he told Gansey. 

Gansey thought about the millions stashed where taxes couldn't reach and said, swallowing hard, "I know."

"Probably think only a higher power can judge them," Boyd muttered grimly. "Well, it will. It will. You need a job, Dick?"

Gansey thought it was nice of him to offer, even though they both knew he didn't.

"Not as much as other people do," he said. "But if you ever need last-minute help with brake pads, give me a call."

Boyd clapped him on the shoulder. 

"Only one thing I can say for your people, Dick. They raised you humble. You're a good man."

Gansey appreciated the compliment, but he would have appreciated it more if Boyd could have pointed him in the direction of Adam. Adam's bike wasn't parked outside either the demo yard or the trailer factory, and Gansey couldn't exactly walk right into either and demand that they tell him where Adam he was. Or rather, he certainly could, but he didn't think Adam would appreciate it. He did walk to the library and ask after Blue, but no one had seen her. None of the families she usually walked dogs for had seen her, either. 

The old factory building seemed too bare when he returned to it. It smelled of new construction, paint and primer and whatever they used to keep the ancient pipes from becoming unusable. He'd placed some mint plants against the wall of windows, but if he wasn't close he couldn't smell them. Smells were swallowed by the expanse. St. Agnes had always been uncomfortably tight but it had always been scented with home: his books and Adam's sweat, and the clean, sensible smell of the sweaters Blue would abandon when she left for Fox Way.

He had one box of books; the rest were on their way from D.C. He pulled this one over and began to go through it. This was what he still did in his spare time. Research. Methodical, careful, calming. This time it was resurrection that interested him. Quick, false deaths. Malory had warned that it all tied into things like spring and agricultural cycles, nature and rebirth. It had been a warning because Gansey had confessed to him that this wasn't what he was after. He didn't feel natural. 

The floor was shabby with shadows when he heard a knock. When he pulled the door open, there were Blue and Noah. Relief conquered his throat and made it difficult to force out his breaths.

"Hi," Blue said. Noah gave a small wave.

"What do you know about Tammuz?" Gansey said, once the matter of his throat cleared up.

"Is that something that comes out of a stopped drain?" Blue said.

"That's very funny," Gansey said. He'd forgotten how astonishingly pretty she was. She was wearing jeans that were more rips that fabric and every bit of skin winked at him, though they were all for the most part perfectly inoffensive bits of skin. He pushed up his glasses, self-conscious. 

"See, he's still wearing them," Noah said, apropos of nothing. "So that should make you happy. Like, he's probably still ponderous and scholarly or whatever."

Blue looked betrayed, even though the betrayal should rightly belong to Gansey.

"Ponderous?" he said. "You like my glasses? They make me scholarly-yet-ponderous?"

"I don't even know what that means," Blue said.

She didn't answer the glasses question but Gansey took this as a yes. He wasn't wearing them for any particular reason. He would switch back to contacts when school began in a week or so. It was only that he'd become used to them, the same way he'd become used to her and Adam and Noah and the Camaro. It was a good kind of used to. It was the kind he didn't want to let go of.

He stepped aside to let them in and was pleased at their reaction. In his head he was counting bedrooms: two below, three above, if you counted this airy second floor main room as a bedroom, which he would. He was obscenely grateful they were here. He showed off the empty downstairs, the mysterious machinery in the corners, the fridge next to the washing machine next to the toilet.

"There should be another bathroom downstairs in about a month," he told Blue. Or now there would be. When he compared this one to the needs of five people, he realized that it would be woefully inadequate.

Blue said, "So you're staying?"

"I did just show you the place I made, so yes."

"I'm going to go look at that machine again," Noah said quickly, and vanished through a side door.

"Why wouldn't I stay?" Gansey said. He'd been calling her for months. It made no sense for her to assume that he was the one preparing to back out of -- of whatever they were. He said as much, but clearly and politely and with no blame in it. If she wanted to back out, then she could. It would sting, but she had every right to change her mind.

"Every time I called they said you were busy."

"I was busy," Blue said. "With Gwenllian. I'm a mirror, remember?" She looked very uncomfortable. "I've always been able to turn it on and off, or at least I thought I could, but when that thing was inside me I couldn't. And then. Well. You saw what happened."

"You ignored my calls for two months?" 

"I kissed you and you died!" 

"That's how I died?" Gansey said. "You kissed me? Wait, does this mean I can kiss you now?"

It was a lot to process but that last piece seemed particularly important. 

"I didn't answer your calls because I didn't want it to be a goodbye," Blue said. She looked sad and Gansey didn't want her to. He drew her in. She didn't seem upset to be drawn in. 

"Why would you stay after that happened?" she said. "I thought every time you called it was just to--to be polite and let me know you were transferring to some awful fancy school in D.C."

"There's an awful fancy school right here that works just as well. If you don't mind me still being a raven boy." 

She hit his bicep lightly and it didn't hurt, but he still said, "Ow." He wasn't sure why. When he prodded the emotion behind it, it felt a great deal like happiness. 

"Can I--" he began, but she cut him off. She kissed him. For a second he couldn't breathe again and, what's more, didn't want to. The kiss undid him, sudden as lightning but sweeter, sweeter still. This wasn't their first kiss, but he didn't need to remember the first one. This was enough.

Noah wolf-whistled from the door to the smallest bedroom. It ruined the moment and when Gansey pulled back he saw saw that Noah knew that it had, but wasn't going to be apologizing for it. When he came forward he wrapped his arms around Blue's shoulders companionably, possessively, completely unlike the Noah Gansey had known. For the first time, he felt like a classmate, like an Aglionby boy. 

"You need to register," Gansey realized. Noah was alive now and too young to stay out of school. Seven years as a ghost probably didn't count in aging terms. "I need to call Pinter. We need to make sure that you can come back for the fall--"

Blue didn't seem to know what he was talking about, but Noah cut him off.

"I'm going to school with Blue," he said, resting his chin on her head. Gansey had never realized how tall he was, nearly as tall as Ronan and Adam. 

"He registered with me," Blue said.

"Like twenty-five percent of my Aglionby friendships killed me," Noah reported, like he was reciting statistics for a public service announcement. "I'll take public school. Look what Ronan made me."

He stepped back from Blue and pulled something out of his bag. He thrust it at Gansey. It was a birth certificate, the date fudged by seven years.

"Your middle name is Dingus?"

"No!" Noah said.

"He couldn't remember what it was, though," Blue said. "So. Ronan."

"Ronan," Noah reflected gloomily.

They loaded Ronan's name with meaning, familiar with it, like it was something they could toss at each other without warning and catch every time. It made Gansey realize just how much time he'd missed while in D.C. 

"How have you been?" he asked them both, really meaning the question.

They stayed late into the evening telling him. He learned what had happened the night of his death, and that he owed Ronan more than he would ever be able to repay. He learned that Noah's soul was tattered, patched and held together only by some kind of dream, but that Calla had said it would do for one average upper-income white male lifetime, because those people hardly used their souls anyway.

"That doesn't sound reassuring," Gansey said.

"You're telling me," Noah sighed. He was sitting close to Blue and he leaned into her, their thighs touching. Gansey felt something very ungentlemanly crawl up his spine. Noah was beloved but jealousy-inducing. Noah had always been the most comfortable person, the one Gansey could rely on, and if he was like that for Gansey, then of course he could be like that for Blue.

"I've got side effects," Noah said now. "You?"

Gansey had one more thing to worry over at night, the death he couldn't remember.

"No," he said. "What do you mean, 'side effects?'"

"I can still sort of hear people's thoughts. I don't have a whole soul, so--" Noah shrugged. "It still gets filled in sometimes. With other people. If I'm comforting you, it probably comes from you."

Guilt tore away the thing crawling up his spine.

"Jesus," he said, running a hand through his hair. "Noah, I--"

He shot a look at Blue. This had to be Blue's decision as well. But it was remarkable how easy a decision it was otherwise, on Gansey's end.

"I want you both with me," he told them. "You too, Noah. In every way. If Blue's fine with it, and Adam's fine with it--"

Blue and Noah exchanged a look.

"About Adam," Blue said.

Gansey waited patiently for several seconds, but she didn't finish her sentence. Noah looked ready to flee again. Gansey decided that the news couldn't be good. He didn't want Noah abandoning them while they discussed it, but given that Noah had actually been murdered, it probably made sense for him to be conflict averse. 

"Did something happen?" Gansey asked quietly. The last thing he remembered was fighting with Adam, hearing Adam stumble over his words, knowing Adam loved him and knowing the love couldn't fix things so easily. He closed his eyes. He wished he could remember whether they had made up. He wished he could have found it easy to forgive Adam then, that night, before everything changed.

What if he'd lost him?

"Cabeswater," he guessed now, feeling his throat close in. 

Blue shook her head. "He's fine in some ways. He's been working with Persephone, learning about what he took on. But it's been hard. It took like a month to get him there. After you left, but he didn't seem to want help."

"He doesn't really believe in help," Noah said.

Gansey couldn't understand this. Adam had helped him more than he could quantify -- Adam had, and Blue and Noah had, and even Ronan had. He had no real strength beyond the strength Adam and the others had lent him so effortlessly. Adam had to know this; it was obvious to Gansey.

"He has times in his head," Noah said carefully, "where it's tangled up. I never liked being with him then. I was tangled, too. I didn't need that." 

Gansey thought back to his first meeting with Adam, to the bruises that had marked him, to the rage he'd felt when he'd discovered that ugly trailer.

"Tangled?" he asked, though he knew perfectly well what Noah was referring to.

"It's a hurt you can't get out of because you don't know the way," Noah said. "Like a pit. If you haven't been there, it's hard to understand."

But Blue said suddenly, voice laced with the same cold, unworthy emotion that had taken Gansey by the spine a few minutes ago, "Ronan gets it, though."

Gansey stared at her. She picked a finger through a rip in her jeans and worked it into a proper-sized hole.

"Did you know he was gay?" she asked.

"I knew he was in love with Adam," Gansey said.

"I guess everyone knew but me," she said. Gansey knew that she hated being left out, and so it wasn't surprising that now she looked very severe, eyebrows peaked in a question.

_What else don't I know?_

"I've always thought he was very handsome," Gansey admitted.

He thought she would be annoyed that he hadn't told her, but instead her response was fiercely protective.

"Well, fine," she said. "Then he's in. But this isn't -- it isn't going to be easy. He has a lot to deal with right now. He just moved back home and he's trying to help his mother and brother, and he can be really unbearable but he deserves a chance to put his life together and he's going to need help. And Adam agrees with me about that."

Gansey was stunned, though maybe he shouldn't have been. Adam and Blue had stood by him and helped him. It made sense that they would want to help Ronan, too. Though the rest of what he thought she was implying made less sense. Blue didn't normally jump from such dangerous precipices. She was a creature of tremendous good sense and this, while very much something Gansey wanted, was not at all sensible.

"This would be five," he told her carefully. "It's hardly conventional, Jane."

Blue rolled her eyes. "Am I conventional?"

"And you?" Gansey said, turning to Noah.

"She's always thinking about how we're all in love with eachother," Noah said, sighing. "If that's true, I don't want to hear it if we don't end up together. Some of her thoughts are going to be unbearable."

This wasn't exactly rousing agreement, but his fingers danced along Gansey's back, light, insubstantial as the ghost he'd been.

-

He didn't sleep that night. He waited until it was late and walked the short distance from Monmouth Manufacturing to St. Agnes.

The light was on in Adam's apartment. He'd thought it might be. Adam would be coming back from work or preparing to head out to it. It was too late to call the office or go in via the church, so Gansey tested the door in the parking lot, the one that led right to the back stairwell. It was open. He let himself in and climbed to Adam's tiny landing, but hesitated at the door. When Blue had suggested that he might have called to break things off, it hadn't felt at all rational to him. But now he understood. He rested his forehead on the door for a minute and tried not to think of the worst things Adam could say.

Then he knocked.

"Tiger?" he said, to give Adam some warning. "It's me."

The walls of the apartment were so thin that he could hear the moment when Adam stilled. Gansey willed him to open the door. Then he heard a rustling. Then Adam did open it.

Gansey drank in his raw, unusual face, just as fine-boned as he remembered. He had grease smeared across one cheekbone and his eyes were hollowed by exhaustion. Gansey wanted to touch his lips to the hollows. Adam's thin mouth dragged down at the corners. Gansey wanted to touch his lips there, too.

He didn't. He looked behind Adam at the constricting little room that still felt his in some way, even though he'd only lived there a short time. Abruptly, he realized that it wasn't his. He hadn't been here in two months. 

"Can I come in?" he asked.

Adam moved to let him pass. Maitland had sent people to get Gansey's things sometime in July and so the room was pitifully bare, but Adam had augmented it with some crates and plastic bins for his clothing. Gansey sat down on a crate and said, "I'm just up the hill now. In that old factory."

He'd hoped that Adam would be pleased but Adam was terse and unreadable.

"I saw people fixing it up all summer. That was you?"

Gansey nodded. 

"I showed Blue and Noah today. I thought you could come by as well. Ronan, too."

Adam stood with his shoulders hunched, hands in the pockets of his coveralls, tall enough to make the room feel disorienting. When he spoke, his voice was remote and peculiarly polite.

"Alright," he said. "When I'm free."

"When will you be free?"

A line creased Adam's forehead. Gansey thought this was the greatest difference between them, how in the end Adam always wore his irritation plain, real and Henriettan about it. Adam wanted so badly to be more than Henriettan, but if he were to lose this trait then Gansey wasn't sure he would be Adam anymore.

"I'm going back to Aglionby in the fall after all," he told Adam, "with you. And Ronan really should too. And I was thinking. The factory's close by, closer to Aglionby than this place is, and there's more than enough room for all of you."

"You can't just ask us to move in with you."

"Why not?" Gansey said. "Didn't you ask me to move in with you?"

"It's not the same."

"Why not?"

Adam answered with inexplicable vehemence. "You can't just arrange things. You only knew us for two months. You can't just line us up, and -- and act like you're going to provide for us--"

"When I had nothing, who provided for me? You. Why can't I do the same for you?"

Adam flushed. He said, "If it looks like nothing from where you are now, then at least it's my nothing, Gansey."

"I didn't say that _you_ have nothing--"

"You don't have to say it," Adam said. "Compared to what you have, that's what it looks like. Things aren't the way they were, and you can't pretend that they are."

This hurt. Gansey knew he should have expected to hear this -- no one else thought he was the same; no one treated him the same, not the press, not Pinter, not even the women of Fox Way -- but he'd hoped for more from Adam. He'd thought he and Adam had something that money couldn't touch.

"Am I so different to you just because I have money?" 

Adam shook his head, but the rest of him wasn't disagreeing: not his distant, miserable eyes, not the way he clutched his middle, partly folded-over. Adam didn't think he was obvious about his upset, but he was. 

"I have my money back," Gansey said. "Fine. But I don't want to be the person I was before I met you. I don't want to be without you. Without all of you I would be nothing but a guy with too many things. You changed me. You made me something more."

Adam shook his head again.

"No," he said, like he couldn't believe what Gansey was proposing. "You were always more than--"

"I was rich," Gansey said, short about it. "That was it. Don't tell me you fell for thinking that made me worthwhile."

_Don't tell me you're like that, Adam._

For a moment, Adam said nothing. 

"Is it over?" Gansey said finally. "You tell me. Because on my end it's not."

Adam blinked. Gansey thought he caught some sudden emotion in him, something less distant and blank, something that might have been surprise. But then it was gone.

"I just don't want people to think this is some kind of payback," he said finally. "I don't want people to think that I helped you to get at your money."

Gansey resisted the urge to roll his eyes, because that was rude. Instead he said, "I don't care what people think. I want to be with you at school. I want you to kiss me when you like, where you like, when you're ready, even if it makes people like Skip and the others go apoplectic."

"Apoplectic?" Adam said.

Gansey hated himself a little for the word. He should have known that would derail things. He was trying to make Adam see that their differences didn't matter, that what people thought didn't matter, and yet his upbringing betrayed the point.

"Indignant," he said, nettled now. "Rankled. Seething. Not at all complaisant. _Whatever_ , Parrish. What I mean is--"

"Half those words are worse," Adam pointed out. His tone cut Gansey off; it was markedly different than before. Tired, wry. He sat on the crate next to Gansey's in one fluid motion. He said, more quiet now, "I don't want to fight. I just need to do this my way. Okay?" 

Then he was leaning in and his breath was hot on Gansey's throat. Gansey breathed out hard when Adam kissed him there. Adam's lips were chapped because Adam lived distant from his body and rarely bothered with tending it, something that left Gansey aching for him. He thought of what Noah had said about the tangle in his mind. He didn't want Adam to live like this. He wanted to fix it.

"I wish you'd let me do a little for you."

Adam stilled, wet mouth still on Gansey's neck. His arm came up and pulled Gansey into him.

"You sound like Blue and Noah."

"Not Ronan?" Gansey said. 

Adam pulled back from him. The gloomy circle cast by the apartment's bare light-bulb made his features more stark and feral.

"Ronan's trying to figure out how to help himself," Adam said, in a way that suggested he didn't fault Ronan for it, that he even encouraged this. Gansey focused on the bareness of the room to avoid feeling stained with jealousy. He'd been away for two months. Two months for Ronan to spend with Adam and Blue; about the same Gansey had received. At once he felt sick at himself for abandoning them, and sick at himself for thinking he had a claim on them, and yet he knew that whatever claim he did have wasn't one he'd be letting go of. 

He could make this work. He needed to make this work. He had died and come back to life, and it would mean nothing if he couldn't keep them with him. Ronan included.

"Do you like him?" he asked. "I do. If you wanted him too, Tiger, that's alright by me."

Or it could be. It would be fragile and fraught at first, but they could work at it.

"That," Adam said suddenly. "God, Gansey. That's it right there. If _I_ want him, like it matters less that you do too. I bet you asked Blue, too."

He curved his fingers around Gansey's neck and brought him close, lips roving against Gansey's jaw until he found Gansey's mouth, hot and waiting. It was absolutely a kiss to make the crew team apoplectic. Adam tasted sweet, but this probably meant that he'd had a soft drink for dinner again. Gansey frowned against his lips and pulled him in, feeling him warm and thin against the front of his shirt.

Adam pulled off, leaned back a little. He said, fast and very serious, "That was always you, from the minute I met you. Trying not to make us unhappy. That wasn't worthless, and you've always had that, Gansey. You still do."

Then, without giving Gansey time to reflect on this, he was kissing him again, artless and hungry and real, burying Gansey in the promise of the semester to come. There was no room for what they wanted to do on the crates, so they moved clumsily but in tandem, Gansey undoing the buttons on his shirt as he stood, Adam fighting for a moment with his coveralls. Gansey took longer to get undressed because he was wearing more and it was all annoyingly well-made, sewn to near-indestructibility by Italian craftsmen.

When he was done, he joined Adam on the bed, passing his hands along Adam's long, pale thighs until he reached the curve of his ass.

"Can you?" he said, gesturing. Adam shifted so that Gansey was looking at his ass head-on. He bent his head and licked each cheek appreciatively, then the dips near Adam's testicles, then lapped at Adam's balls until Adam was breathing hard against the sheets. He went back to Adam's ass and took his time with it, letting his tongue paint each cheek again and dipping low in the crevice, tonguing Adam's hole. Adam twisted around and one hand grabbed at Gansey's hair, pulling.

"Come on, Gansey," he said, directing him away. "Let's do this."

Gansey let himself be pulled off, but only with reluctance. He knew what he liked and what Adam liked and didn't see any reason to delay it, but Adam was shaking his head and then turning, pushing Gansey back against his worn pillow. He swung one leg over Gansey's chest, giving Gansey a view of his ass again, and then leaned forward, taking Gansey's dick in his mouth. The effect was hot-white, Adam humming around his cock. For a moment, nothing existed but Adam's mouth around him. But Adam's ass was in front of him and it was too good to ignore. Gansey hooked his arms around Adam's thighs and brought it to his face again, then resumed lapping at it. 

They moved together for once, he and Adam, Adam using his hands and mouth cleverly, wetly, and Gansey parting at his cheeks to get deeper inside. He wanted to disappear inside Adam. He wanted Adam to feel how close they were. He wanted to know Adam felt it, how much better they were when they worked together, when they helped each other. Every hot suck to his dick made him want to work harder, to make Adam feel better. When people saw him with Adam, let _this_ be the thing that flashed in their heads -- carnal, riotous, unGanseylike, and delightful. 

There was an edge of competition, too, because Adam was dedicated and hardworking, clever with his hands and tongue. Gansey wanted to make him come first, but Adam won out. Gansey was disappointed in himself. Adam's dick still bobbed above Gansey's stomach. 

"Let me," Gansey panted, when Adam was pulling off of him. He gestured at Adam, but Adam stepped off the bed and rummaged in one of the crates by the window. Gansey propped himself up on his elbows to watch him root through it. Adam was boyishly elegant with his dick at half-mast.

He held up a tube and his gaze skittered anxiously to the bare wall behind Gansey. When he spoke, self-consciousness bled out through his accent.

"Can we?" he said.

Gansey was astonished. "You're very well-prepared."

"I bought it the week before you moved out," Adam admitted. "I didn't know if we'd need it."

Gansey's mouth was dry. It was hard to process how very much he wanted this. It shouldn't be a surprise, and yet, like every other revelation, it was a little surprising: a surprising relief. This was, he decided, a part of himself that he could learn to like very much, so odd, so greedy for this. If all other people saw was Richard Campbell Gansey III, heir and scion, nothing more than his money; then at least he would know that he'd shown Adam this Gansey, whose heart beat fast with want when an elegant boy offered him this.

He nodded at Adam and brought himself to the edge of the bed, unsure of how to position himself. He could turn over, but that seemed too uncouth. He wasn't there yet, he thought, a little crestfallen about it. Maybe he wasn't so odd. He just wanted to see Adam's face.

Adam solved the problem by dropping between his knees, making the action commonplace like he was kneeling before a car that needed work. He pulled Gansey's thighs forward and let his legs settle on his shoulders, Gansey's body arcing to reveal his hole. Adam's lube-coated fingers were slick but not unpleasant, feeling down Gansey's crack and around the ring at first. Gansey felt himself start to get hard again and leaned back, trusting. He trusted Adam to do this. Adam could be experimental, but he was methodical and dependable too, and now he made sure that every part of Gansey was smooth and slippery, pliable as he could make it, every brush and stroke sending careful, sweet jolts of pleasure to Gansey's dick.

When he pushed a lube-coated finger inside, Gansey took in a breath. 

"Easy," Adam murmured, rubbing briefly at Gansey's thigh with his free hand. Once he was in past the ring of muscle things settled more marvelously than Gansey expected. There was a definite stretch, near-painful, but the fullness brought his dick up faster than anything else. He couldn't believe that slight burn could preface something so satisfying. 

"Can you tell me how it feels?" Adam asked. "If it hurts, or if I'm not doing it right?"

"It's right," Gansey managed, because the truth was he wished Adam would hurry up and try to fit in more: two fingers, Adam's long dick, Adam's careful hand. 

Adam frowned. 

"But you'll tell me? Usually I get more ten dollar words out of you."

Gansey rolled his head back so that Adam wouldn't see him rolling his eyes. He was on edge, strung on a current from Adam's fingers to his dick. Words took work. The next sentence came only in the moments when Adam's finger slid out halfway and the marvelous fullness retreated.

"The sensation is -- positively recherché -- but I think I'd like -- to keep on feeling it."

"Oh," Adam said, "Well, if it's rayshershay, then."

His accent was still out but he was smiling, his face transformed by it, the expression one Gansey wanted him to wear all the time. He added another slick finger, working Gansey's hole, making Gansey groan into the pillow. He was so hard that it hurt now, his balls drawn tight, because now Adam was fucking him in earnest, using his fingers to learn the landscape. The stretch kept getting better, and then Adam's finger hit a spot just inside that made him scream it was so good, made him arc up desperately for more, feeling nothing but the pleasure.

"There?" Adam said.

But at Gansey's frantic nod he didn't do it again. Instead he slipped his fingers out, and Gansey, cheated and desperate, gave what he hardly recognized as a sob. Then Adam was pushing his legs up and standing. He rolled on a condom and slicked up his dick, generous with the lube until it was dripping. Intellectually Gansey knew this was important, but his body didn't seem to care. He felt so _empty_. It was a relief when the head of Adam's dick was at his hole, thicker and hotter than his fingers.

He pushed in. Despite his careful preparation of Gansey it was all burn and stretch, the fullness almost painful and yet meeting a need in Gansey that Gansey couldn't understand. He was making even more incoherent sounds now and Adam put his fingers to his lips and said, "Shhh, shhh," as he moved, coming up between Gansey's legs to press kisses to his neck again, fucking into him clumsily at first. 

When he hit that spot inside Gansey it was a slower, sweeter drag and the pleasure large and unbroken. Gansey's mind went blank for a long highway stretch and came back to Adam fucking him in earnest now. His legs ached when Adam spread them further but then Adam's hand was on his dick, thumb rubbing the head as Adam's own dick burned hot inside him. He only had to hit Gansey's prostate twice more to make Gansey come, the pleasure absolute. His clever hands jerked Gansey until Gansey was done, and then he bucked into him a few more times before he was coming himself, going still above Gansey in that way he had. Gansey pulled him down and kissed him, running his hands through the dusty hair. 

The bed, he slowly realized, was threadbare, uncomfortable, and by now full of bodily fluids. The water in the shower would be cold. The bed and shower at Monmouth were better, but Monmouth didn't have Adam in it. He knew he could love Monmouth but he already loved this, having Adam breathing hard against him, slipping out of him, holding him close.

He was about to suggest that they shower, but the hollows under Adam's eyes were dark and his hold was lax now. He was halfway to dreaming. 

"Come on, Tiger," Gansey said, and pushed back along the bed until he was in the dry corner near the wall. Adam followed and curved into him, in just the way he'd missed these past few months. He traced the freckles on Adam's arm with a finger. It would be an unbearably hot night. It already was, but somehow Gansey had missed this too much to care. He blinked at a shadow on the wall that looked almost like a creeper vine, then closed his own eyes and slept better than he had in nearly four months.

-

The fall approached with uncanny magic, leaves turning, insect-song fading into the brisk howl of the wind. It was Gansey's favorite time of year, everything dying and coming in new all at once, and this year it had a bittersweet edge to it that it hadn't before. 

Adam still wouldn't move in and Blue wasn't allowed to, but they worked on his factory throughout the last weeks of the summer and well into September. Gansey could have hired more people to repair Monmouth's first floor, but he had all the crew he wanted: Adam, with his knack for physics and power tools and heavy machinery; Blue to propose odd, clever new details like a tree planted in the floor inside, just here, where the windows let in the most light. Ronan to smash whatever needed smashing, purposefully and with grim satisfaction. Noah to get Ronan into trouble, which it turned out Noah had a genius for. 

Gansey suspected that Noah was known around the local public school as Blue's boyfriend. He decided that he wouldn't be envious over it. Noah could be horribly pliable, bad moods bleeding into him from the others. Sometimes time slowed or stalled completely near him, and though Adam said he was trying to understand why, no one really knew. In October Ronan and Noah vanished for four days and returned at five in the morning. Noah came back drunk, wearing a polo emblazoned with the logo of the Greenwich Country Club.

"My sister's getting married," he told Gansey miserably.

"You went to see your family?"

Noah nodded.

"They weren't happy to see you," Gansey guessed.

"My mom was happy," Noah said. "Or I don't know, maybe she will be."

Gansey couldn't understand this.

"But you're alive now."

"They didn't know I was definitely dead," Noah said. "My dad spent seven years thinking I ran away. He was pissed. He doesn't want to believe that I got murdered."

Somewhere in the recesses of the factory Ronan was breaking glass bottles, or windows, or fishbowls or something. It was a challenge to get him to agree to come to class the next day and he spent most of the day tossing barbs at Henry Cheng, who had become something like a friend to them and who was remarkably good at withstanding Ronan's barbs. 

Blue and Adam continued to become more magical. Blue had always been magical, but it had been like a small fist curled inside her, and now with Gwenllian's help it uncurled into brilliance. If they saw a shadow walking along the line, Blue was the one who could stop it, call out to it, learn its name, ask how far it had walked, ask what it thought it might find on the other side. 

She seemed to like the talent, but she was more worried about college.

As for Adam, the taps in the sink at St. Agnes whispered to him. The shadows followed him home if he wasn't firm enough with Cabeswater. Sometimes the forest colonized his ceiling, which bloomed jungle vines and liverworts and drooping, urn shaped flowers. 

"It isn't me," he told Gansey one night. "It's Cabeswater."

But he was changing. He'd become a magician while Gansey had looked away. The forest was packed into his bones, and Gansey, who would have shared magic with any of his friends, sometimes couldn't bear to share his friend with magic. He was glad that Adam, like Blue, cared more about college than arcane power. He admired Adam the magician, but loved Adam the boy.

In this, some unworthy, grudging part of him knew that Ronan Lynch had him beaten cold. Ronan had absolute faith in Adam's bond with Cabeswater and, despite his hooked jealousy in nearly every other respect, didn't mind at all when the forest garlanded Adam in the middle of the night. Ronan had been bred with magic, magic fields, magic ravensong, magic death. And Gansey wasn't sure he hadn't lost some part of Adam to this boy with the savage smile.

Or perhaps not lost. Adam was still his own person, and still loved Gansey. But a new part of Adam had grown, and this part didn't always need Gansey to be the sun.

In November, Ronan invited them home to meet his mother, who was awake and running the farm, fortified with a soul Ronan had plucked from dreaming and gifted to her for her birthday. A second dream was churning in his mind for his brother. He called it Orphan Boy and wouldn't, or couldn't, explain what he meant by this. 

They drove past sedate grey-silver beeches and down a driveway colonnaded by oak trees before Gansey saw the spectacular riot of fields. Ronan, in the front passenger seat, was painted softer colors by the fading light, but then this could have been the subtle shift in his expression. He went from blade to boy.

It had been hard to watch Adam kiss him for the first time. With Adam, Ronan was at his most tender and most feral. Adam couldn't understand this but responded to it nonetheless, a branch of him arcing silently toward this light.

There was nothing so unsaid in Gansey's relationship with Ronan. The first time Gansey kissed him, it was the day after Blue had told her mother point-blank that she was moving into Monmouth. Gansey slept easily that night, and then woke raw and alive. That morning, he rejected the athletic director's offer to captain crew again, calmly claimed his old seat in the dining hall for breakfast, and watched as Skip and the others approached the table warily.

Adam had looked like he would rather not have this encounter. But Ronan had gone from slouching to sharp, his grin venomous. 

The team sent Tad over.

"Hey," Tad had said. "So. Guess we can sit together again, huh?"

"You can," Gansey said, though Adam was subtly shaking his head in protest. "Win can. I think Skip and the others might be more comfortable somewhere else."

Tad had looked nervous, caught between two parties.

"Right," he'd said. "But where?"

"It doesn't matter," Adam said. "These are lunch tables. This is stupid."

But Ronan said, "In the hallway. In a fucking coma."

This was made crueler by context. Tad blinked at him. Everyone knew by now what had happened to Kavinsky. Gansey put a warning hand on Ronan's neck and was surprised by how Ronan shifted into it, baring his belly even as he flashed his teeth.

"Come on, Captain," Tad said.

"I'm not anymore," Gansey noted coolly.

"Trey -- don't be _gay_ \--"

"Half right." Gansey said. "Ronan?"

Somehow he knew Ronan wouldn't mind. Adam had been handed the dreaming heart, the truth of Ronan. But there was still something wounded in Ronan that wanted to set things alight. The Gansey Gansey had been would have wanted to control it, direct it, never let it overflow. He still wanted that.

But he had no interest in judging Ronan. This wild, marvelous boy had helped them despite himself. Gansey turned to him and guided him by his tattooed neck, playing idly with the back of his collar, wanting to expose his entire snarling spine to every last spoiled, privileged creature here. Ronan, he realized, really wouldn't mind that. Gansey kissed him without gentleness, but Ronan took it gently, eyes open, wired awake and needy.

Skip made choking noises. Tad said, "Shit," pulled out a chair, and, looking paralyzed, sat down next to Adam. Then Henry joined them and said cheerfully, "Well, now I know what they're going to ban next. This school is so fascist."

But despite his complete willingness to be kissed, Ronan was more recalcitrant about sex than Gansey expected, much harder to understand in this regard.

"It feels very good," Gansey told him one Sunday, trying to make him see reason.

"I'm not going to let you eat my ass and suck my dick," Ronan said. "I have church today."

Then he'd let Gansey straighten his tie and left for St. Agnes, all while Noah and Blue laughed themselves into a pile of limbs on the bed. 

So the invitation to the Barns felt like a turning point, a sign of some acceptance. Ronan had been slowly waking each creature on the farm and a fat ginger cat twined around Gansey's legs at the door, then abandoned him entirely for Blue. When they sat at the table for dinner Adam's feet were claimed by a violet-eyed farmdog. Noah was the only one the animals shyed away from, and he didn't mention it, just sighed and helped Ronan and Aurora bring the food to the table.

About half of it was burned, but Gansey politely didn't mention it. He'd learned to eat whatever was put in front of him.

"Did you forget to cook this?" Ronan said, eyeing a plate of chicken he was holding.

"What?" Aurora said. She looked lovely but harassed, most of her hair escaping a hasty knot on the top of her head. Ronan had said that she'd been changed. She had developed a keen interest in world travel, in wanting to see new places. When Ronan had introduced Adam as "somebody who's going to ditch us for college," she'd nodded sharply and said, "good," then announced her plans to visit the Mojave desert with Gwenllian, who apparently wanted to see all the air in the world.

"Also, the dirt-to-tree ratio there is very good," Aurora declared. "Not a lot of trees. I feel like every minute of my life I've had to look at trees."

Now she said, "Ronan, you didn't tell me you were bringing four people until yesterday. How was I supposed to make a whole dinner? It's not easy for me to focus on that kind of thing. I'm a chimera."

"What's a chimera?" Noah said suddenly.

"I think it's sort of a wood nymph," Aurora said. She dumped the chicken in the trash and served toast with some kind of dipping yogurt instead, which at least pleased Blue.

Afterwards, they left her to pack in peace and went up to Ronan's room, where, trepidatious, Ronan locked the door and then turned to them and said, flatly, "Slow, and no weird shit."

Ronan could pull wonders from his mind and resurrect the dead, but his tone suggested that there were literally no sexual acts in the world that he wouldn't class as weird shit. Gansey eyed the others.

"We need to keep our underwear on," he suggested.

"I didn't say that," Ronan said, annoyed.

But they still stayed mostly-clothed. Coordinating five people was taxing even for Gansey, anyway, and between Ronan and Blue there was no interest, so it made sense to stay close and comfortable but not be rigid about it. Adam and Noah claimed the bed with Ronan, so Blue and Gansey took the window-seat. He immediately regretted the underwear rule. Her underwear was sensible and covering and largely about providing support to the areas that needed it. While Gansey appreciated the solid cotton construction, he couldn't help but feel that it got in the way of things.

Outside, the wind darted fitfully among the plum trees, everything red-gold, everything in motion. Inside, the room was warm, a time-capsule of summer. Gansey pulled off his own shirt to make up for instituting silly rules and caught Blue looking at him sadly.

"What?" he said.

She pulled his glasses off and kissed along the curves of his cheekbones.

"I wish I hadn't killed you even once," she admitted.

Because she was Blue, she knew how hard it was sometimes to know that he had been dead and was now miraculously alive, to know that he had received yet one more piece of unfair good fortune. He'd never deserved his privilege before. He wasn't sure he deserved it now. But he wanted to deserve it, more than anything.

But because it was true, he told her, "I'd rather things turn out this way so that I can be with you now. I'd rather have this than anything else."

Then he kissed her. Behind them there was a muffled cry. Once he broke the kiss and turned he saw Ronan on Noah's lap with Noah grinding against him. Adam knelt before them. Ever inventive, he was blowing hotly on the tent in Ronan's boxers. When Ronan swore creatively in response, Adam only said, mildly, "Underwear on."

" _Fuck_ you, take it _off_ , everybody take it off--"

Adam obliged and then closed his mouth over the head of Ronan's cock, effectively rendering him incoherent. Noah leaned back and started trying to shimmy out of his own underwear with Ronan still on him. He raised his eyebrows at Gansey when he caught him looking.

"Ronan's breaking the rules," he explained.

"That's very wrong of him and we shouldn't follow his example," Gansey decided. He slipped a hand in Blue's underwear and found her clit, rubbing it as she made encouraging, wonderful sounds. He said, "At least, not unless you want us to, Jane."

In the end she made the executive decision that they all should.

They stayed the night and slept tangled together in Ronan's blankets on the floor. When the morning broke with bold crimson flashes over the hills beyond, Gansey woke as well, mostly because Aurora was blasting Irish music from downstairs as she packed. He blinked and saw that Adam was already awake, leaning against Ronan's footboard with Ronan's head in his lap, Blue curled against his side.

He seemed to know Gansey was awake, because he said, "I'll move in if you want. It's, like, six months until we're done with school. Then I'm going. There's no point to living separately."

He sounded like he was trying to convince himself more than anything. Gansey said, "You don't have to if it still doesn't feel right. We're visiting you when you go to college, anyway. You can't get rid of us that easily."

Something in Adam looked like it relaxed a bit.

"It's not just that," he admitted after a few minutes. "Blue's there now. Everyone but me is there. So I get jealous."

This was understandable so Gansey didn't comment on it at first, but when he saw Adam's shoulders tense up he realized that what Adam wanted was permission for this.

"It's fine," he said gently. "It happens to the best of us."

"Really?"

"Really," Gansey said.

He knew it went deeper than this, that this was Adam wanting to believe at last that he could be his own and someone else's. This was Adam learning to love himself under those conditions. But Gansey didn't point this out. He just reached out a hand and took Adam's, glad for this.

"Did you do any more research on that resurrected god-king you were talking about?" Adam asked, yawning.

"Not recently," Gansey said, and realized that it was true. He loved research, loved ordering the facts and unearthing the details. But lately this hadn't felt urgent. Now, with Adam, it even felt trivial.

He would continue to look for magic. There were still sleeping kings out there, desperate to stop dreaming and walk better paths. But not him. Now he had Blue, Noah, Ronan, Adam. And when he prodded at the question inside him -- _do I deserve this?_ \-- he realized that he didn't need to unearth kings. This was enough. He had them.

THE END

**Author's Note:**

> Special thanks to twitter users zeegoeshere, miscellaneys, penumbreon, and kismetnemesis for help with that Adansey scene in chapter 7. Thanks also to everyone who has kept up with this fic, to everyone who has commented on it even once and to the especially lovely people who kept revisiting and letting me know what worked and what didn't. 
> 
> This started out as an Adansey A Little Princess AU, but obviously changed course quite a bit until it included the whole gang, notes on this [here](http://nimmieamee.tumblr.com/post/143126922846/king-by-the-roadside-complete). Now the fic will be jossed by TRK, but hopefully it's been a good read. If you liked it, please let me know!


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